LIBRARY 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 


BIOLOGY  „. 

LIBRARY  Class 

G 


THE  BROSS  LIBRARY 

VOLUME  IV 


THE    BROSS    LECTURES   .     .    1907 

THE  BIBLE  OF  NATUKE 


FIVE   LECTURES  DELIVERED   BEFORE 

LAKE   FOREST   COLLEGE 

ON   THE   FOUNDATION  OF   THE    LATE 

WILLIAM  BROSS 


BY 

J.  ARTHUR  THOMSON,  M.A. 

REGIUS   PROFESSOR   OF   NATURAL   HISTORY 
IN  THE   UNIVERSITY   OF  ABERDEEN 


CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
NEW    YORK  1908 


BIOLOGY 

LIBRARY 

G 


GENERAL 


COPYRIGHT,  1908,  BT 
THE  TRUSTEES  OF  LAKE  FOREST  UNIVERSITY 


Published  September,  1908 


THE  BROSS  FOUNDATION 

THE  Bross  Lectures  are  an  outgrowth  of  a  fund 
established  in  1879  by  the  late  William  Bross, 
Lieutenant-Governor  of  Illinois  from  1866  to 
1870.  Desiring  some  memorial  of  his  son,  Na- 
thaniel Bross,  who  died  in  1856,  Mr.  Bross  entered 
into  an  agreement  with  the  "Trustees  of  Lake 
Forest  University,"  whereby  there  was  finally 
transferred  to  them  the  sum  of  forty  thousand  dol- 
lars, the  income  of  which  was  to  accumulate  in 
perpetuity  for  successive  periods  of  ten  years,  the 
accumulations  of  one  decade  to  be  spent  in  the 
following  decade,  for  the  purpose  of  stimulating 
the  best  books  or  treatises  "on  the  connection,  re- 
lation and  mutual  bearing  of  any  practical  science, 
the  history  of  our  race,  or  the  facts  in  any  depart- 
ment of  knowledge,  with  and  upon  the  Christian 
Religion."  The  object  of  the  donor  was  to  "call 
out  the  best  efforts  of  the  highest  talent  and  the  ripest 
scholarship  of  the  world  to  illustrate  from  science, 
or  from  any  department  of  knowledge,  and  to  demon- 
strate the  divine  origin  and  the  authority  of  the 
Christian  Scriptures',  and,  further,  to  show  how 
both  science  and  revelation  coincide  and  prove  the 
existence,  the  providence,  or  any  or  all  of  the  attri- 


vi  The  Bross  Foundation 

butes  of  the  only  living  and  true  God,  'infinite, 
eternal  and  unchangeable  in  His  being,  wisdom, 
power,  holiness,  justice,  goodness,  and  truth.'" 

The  gift  contemplated  in  the  original  agreement 
of  1879  was  finally  consummated  in  1890.  The 
first  decade  of  the  accumulation  of  interest  having 
closed  in  1900,  the  Trustees  of  the  Bross  Fund 
began  at  this  time  to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the 
deed  of  gift.  It  was  determined  to  give  the  gen- 
eral title  of  "The  Bross  Library"  to  the  series  of 
books  purchased  and  published  with  the  proceeds 
of  the  Bross  Fund.  In  accordance  with  the  ex- 
press wish  of  the  donor,  that  the  "Evidences  of 
Christianity"  of  his  "very  dear  friend  and  teacher, 
Mark  Hopkins,  D.D.,"  be  purchased  and  "ever 
numbered  and  known  as  No.  1  of  the  series," 
the  Trustees  secured  the  copyright  of  this  work, 
which  is  now  numbered  as  Volume  I  of  the  Bross 
Library. 

The  trust  agreement  prescribed  two  methods  by 
which  the  production  of  books  and  treatises  of  the 
nature  contemplated  by  the  donor  was  to  be  stimu- 
lated: 

1.  The  Trustees  were  empowered  to  offer  one 
or  more  prizes  during  each  decade,  the  competi- 
tion for  which  was  to  be  thrown  open  to  "the 
scientific  men,  the  Christian  philosophers  and 
historians  of  all  nations."  In  accordance  with 
this  provision,  a  prize  of  $6,000  was  offered  in 


The  Bross  Foundation  vii 

1902  for  the  best  book  fulfilling  the  conditions  of 
the  deed  of  gift,  the  competing  manuscripts  to 
be  presented  on  or  before  June  1,  1905.  The 
prize  was  awarded  to  the  Reverend  James  Orr, 
D.D.,  Professor  of  Apologetics  and  Systematic 
Theology  in  the  United  Free  Church  College, 
Glasgow,  for  his  treatise  on  "The  Problem  of  the 
Old  Testament,"  which  was  published  in  1906 
as  Volume  III  of  the  Bross  Library.  The  next 
decennial  prize  will  be  awarded  about  1915,  and 
will  be  announced  in  due  time. 

2.  The  Trustees  were  also  empowered  to  "se- 
lect and  designate  any  particular  scientific  man  or 
Christian  philosopher  and  the  subject  on  which  he 
shall  write,"  and  to  "agree  with  him  as  to  the  sum 
he  shall  receive  for  the  book  or  treatise  to  be  writ- 
ten." Under  this  provision  the  Trustees  have, 
from  time  to  time,  invited  eminent  scholars  to  de- 
liver courses  of  lectures  before  Lake  Forest  Col- 
lege, such  courses  to  be  subsequently  published  as 
volumes  in  the  Bross  Library.  The  first  course  of 
lectures,  on  "Obligatory  Morality,"  was  delivered 
in  May,  1903,  by  the  Reverend  Francis  Landey 
Patton,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  President  of  Princeton 
Theological  Seminary.  The  copyright  of  these 
lectures  is  now  the  property  of  the  Trustees  of  the 
Bross  Fund.  The  second  course  of  lectures,  on 
"The  Bible:  Its  Origin  and  Nature,"  was  deliv- 
ered in  May,  1904,  by  the  Reverend  Marcus 


viii  The  Bross  Foundation 

Dods,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Exegetical  Theology  in 
New  College,  Edinburgh.  These  lectures  were 
published  in  1905  as  Volume  II  of  the  Bross  Li- 
brary. The  third  course  of  lectures,  on  "The 
Bible  of  Nature,"  was  delivered  from  September 
24  to  October  3, 1907,  by  Mr.  J.  Arthur  Thomson, 
M.A.,  Regius  Professor  of  Natural  History  in  the 
University  of  Aberdeen.  These  lectures  are  em- 
bodied in  the  present  volume. 

JOHN  SCHOLTE  NOLLEN, 

President  of  Lake  Forest  College. 

LAKE  FOREST,  ILLINOIS, 
NOVEMBER,  1907. 


SUMMARY  OF  CONTENTS 

I.    THE  WONDER  OF  THE  WORLD 

The  sense  of  wonder  a  human  characteristic,  though 
very  varied  in  expression — It  lies  at  the  roots  of  science 
and  philosophy,  and  is  one  of  the  footstools  of  religion — 
What  are  the  mainsprings  of  rational  wonder? — The 
abundance  of  power  in  the  world — We  cannot  think  of  it 
as  beginning  or  as  ending — An  illustration  from  Radium 
— The  power  of  life  is  not  less  wonderful — A  water-mite 
is  relatively  more  efficient  than  a  steam-engine,  and  a 
fire-fly  than  a  search-light — The  constructive  and  destruc- 
tive power  of  microbes — The  abundance  of  life — Goethe's 
expression  of  this — The  wonder  of  the  immensities  of 
Nature  remains  in  spite  of  our  modern  annihilation  of 
distance — Fraunhofer  "  approximavit  sidera,"  but  there  is 
still  room  for  wonder — The  manifoldness  of  Nature,  an 
overflowing  form-fountain — Intricacy  of  things,  an  ant  is 
many  times  more  visibly  intricate  than  a  locomotive — 
"The  simplest  organism  we  know  is  far  more  complex 
than  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States"— Amid  all 
this  multiplicity  and  intricacy  there  is  a  pervading  order — 
The  world  is  a  cosmos,  not  a  curiosity-shop;  a  universe, 
not  a  multiverse — Most  disturbances  of  the  order  are  of 
man's  making — "All  epidemic  diseases  could  be  abolished 
in  fifty  years" — The  pervading  order  is  seen  in  the  uni- 
versal network  of  interrelations — Nature  is  a  vast  system 
of  linkages — The  web  of  life — It  is  true  that  there  is  uni- 
versal flux — The  world  is  "a  changeful  process  in  which 
nought  endures  save  the  flow  of  energy  and  the  rational 
ix 


x  Summary  of  Contents 

order  which  pervades  it" — Yet  there  is  persistence  amid 
change — A  species  is  "a  sort  of  visible  fugue  wandering 
about  a  central  theme" — "The  organic  world  as  a  whole 
is  a  perpetual  flux  of  changing  types,"  and  yet  there  is  a 
remarkable  stability  of  type— The  drama  of  animal  life, 
its  inexhaustible  marvels — Migrations  of  birds  and  eels  as 
illustrations — Adaptations — "Wherever  you  tap  organic 
nature  it  seems  to  flow  with  purpose " — The  old  special 
arguments  from  design  are  replaceable  by  "a  wider  tele- 
ology, based  upon  the  fundamental  proposition  of  evolu- 
tion"— Progress  the  crowning  wonder — In  Lotze's  words, 
"There  is  the  unity  of  an  onward  advancing  melody" — 
The  omnipresence  of  beauty  in  finished  and  normal  things 
— Is  any  one  thing  more  wonderful  than  another? — Walt 
Whitman's  doctrine — The  wonder  of  a  pebble,  a  flower  in 
the  wall,  an  earthworm — The  sense  of  wonder  and  the 
scientific  mood — The  relations  of  the  practical,  emotional, 
and  scientific  moods — The  sense  of  wonder  and  the  re- 
sults of  science — Kant's  famous  passage  on  wonder — 
Emerson's  "Excelsior." 

II.    THE  HISTORY  OF  THINGS 

The  antiquity  of  things — The  age  of  the  Earth  must  be 
reckoned  in  millions  of  years — Things  have  changed  with 
the  times — The  nebular  or  meteoritic  hypothesis — The 
history  of  a  star — Stages  in  the  history  of  the  Earth — 
Sculpturing  of  scenery — The  hand  of  life  upon  the  Earth 
— Age  of  the  Earth — Inorganic  evolution — Interpretation 
of  the  past — Scientific  interpretation  is  not  in  the  strict 
sense  explanation — It  is  redescription  in  terms  of  the  sim- 
plest possible  formulae — William  of  Occam's  razor — But 
the  common  denominator  of  physical  science  [Matter, 
Energy,  Ether]  is  not  self-explanatory — Admittedly,  science 
starts  with  a  great  deal  "given" — Development  and  evolu- 


Summary  of  Contents  xi 

tion — The  story  of  the  Earth  is  really  the  story  of  a  develop- 
ment, a  continuous  natural  development  in  which  ante- 
cedents pass  over  into  their  consequents — Recoil  from  the 
scientific  position — The  scientific  outlook  is  not  the  only 
one  permissible  and  available,  but  we  must  not  try  to  look 
out  of  two  windows  at  once — The  aim  of  science  as  dis- 
tinguished from  that  of  philosophy — If  the  scientific  in- 
terpretation is  sound,  the  cosmos  was  already  implicit  in 
the  "nebula,"  there  never  was  any  chaos  at  all,  there  is 
nothing  in  the  end  that  was  not  also  in  the  beginning — 
We  are  thus  led  to  add  to  the  scientific  interpretation  a 
philosophical  interpretation:  "In  the  beginning  was  the 
Logos." 

III.    ORGANISMS  AND  THEIR  ORIGIN 

The  great  variety  of  living  creatures — What  is  charac- 
teristic of  them  all  as  distinguished  from  inanimate  systems 
— Contrast  of  the  quick  and  the  dead — Puzzling  phenom- 
ena, such  as  latent  life,  local  life,  potential  life — The  living 
organism  looked  at  from  the  chemist's  point  of  view — 
Living  matter  probably  a  mixture  (obviously  no  jumble!) 
of  proteids  and  other  highly  complex  substances,  owing 
its  virtue  to  their  cooperative  interaction — The  living  or- 
ganism looked  at  from  the  physicist's  point  of  view — An 
engine?  A  self-stoking,  self-repairing,  self-preservative, 
self-adjusting,  self-increasing,  self-reproducing  engine  I — 
At  present  no  vital  phenomenon  can  be  completely  re- 
described  in  physico-chemical  terms — The  living  organism 
looked  at  from  the  biologist's  point  of  view — It  is  char- 
acterized by  its  power  of  growth  at  the  expense  of  material 
quite  different  from  itself,  by  retaining  its  integrity  in 
spite  of  ceaseless  metabolism,  by  its  cyclical  development, 
by  its  power  of  effective  response,  by  its  unified  behaviour— 
The  problem  of  the  origin  of  organisms  upon  the  Earth— 


xii  Summary  of  Contents 

Does  this  admit  of  scientific  solution? — Had  life  a  begin- 
ning ? — May  organisms  have  come  from  elsewhere  ?  May 
organisms  have  been  evolved  from  not-living  matter? 
"Omne  vivum  e  vivo"  an  empirical  statement  of  the  re- 
sults of  observation,  not  a  dogma — The  trend  of  evolu- 
tionary thinking  leads  one  to  favor  the  idea  of  abiogenesis 
— The  difficulties  to  be  faced — We  must  not  exaggerate 
the  apartness  of  the  animate  from  the  inanimate;  nor 
depreciate  it — Suppose  an  organism  could  be  made  arti- 
ficially, what  then? 

IV.    THE  EVOLUTION  OF  ORGANISMS 

The  general  idea  of  evolution  (that  the  present  is  the 
child  of  the  past  and  the  parent  of  the  future)  was  first 
realized  in  relation  to  human  affairs — It  was  thence  pro- 
jected on  Nature — It  is  a  very  old  idea,  perhaps  as  old  as 
clear  thinking — Darwin  and  his  fellow-workers  made  the 
idea  of  organic  evolution  current  intellectual  coin — Why 
do  we  accept  the  evolutionary  modal  interpretation? — It 
is  not  demonstrable  like  the  conservation  of  energy  or  like 
the  gravitation  formula — We  accept  it  because  it  fits  the 
facts,  because  no  facts  contradict  it,  because  it  is  con- 
gruent with  our  interpretation  of  other  orders  of  facts — 
There  is  no  other  scientific  modal  interpretation — The 
validity  of  the  theory  of  descent — We  must  not  mix  up 
scientific  with  transcendental  interpretations— The  facts  of 
past  history  as  disclosed  by  the  patience  of  the  palaeon- 
tologists— The  record  in  the  rocks — Impressions:  that 
everything  is  equally  perfect,  no  prentice  work;  that  the 
fountain  of  life  is  practically  inexhaustible,  infinite  resource ; 
that  many  fine  types  and  races  have  wholly  passed  away 
without  leaving  any  lineal  descendants;  that  there  is  in- 
dubitable progress,  throughout  the  ages  life  has  been 
slowly  creeping  upward — Factors  in  Evolution — The  raw 


Summary  of  Contents  xiii 

material  of  progress  furnished  by  variations  and  mutations 
— De  Vries's  Evening  Primroses — "Modifications"  do  not 
count  for  much  as  far  as  the  race  is  concerned — The 
directive  factors  are  included  in  the  terms  Selection  and 
Isolation — A  common  error  as  to  fortuitousness — The 
preciousness  of  individuality — The  importance  of  struggle 
and  endeavor — Struggle  is  more  than  competitive — Ethical 
aspect  of  organic  evolution — Attempt  at  a  correction  of  the 
ultra-Darwinian  picture — The  struggle  for  existence  is 
often  an  endeavor  after  well-being,  an  endeavor  for  others 
as  well  as  self — Darwin  on  the  emotional  value  of  the 
evolutionary  conception. 

V.    MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE 

Man's  zoological  position  and  his  distinctive  peculiarities 
— Closely  allied  anatomically  to  the  Primates,  but  dis- 
tinctive from  heel  to  chin,  from  big  toe  to  forehead,  above 
all  in  his  big  brain — His  real  distinctiveness  depends  not 
on  anatomical  peculiarities,  but  on  his  powers,  especially 
on  his  powers  of  rational  discourse,  of  building  up  general 
ideas,  of  guiding  his  conduct  by  ideals — Does  "the  all- 
pervading  similitude  of  structure"  between  Man  and  the 
Primate  stock  imply  affiliation? — The  scientific  answer  is 
Yes,  Man  and  the  Anthropoid  apes  must  have  had  a  com- 
mon ancestor — What  other  interpretations  are  in  the  field  ? 
That  man  is  "the  Great  Exception"  to  natural  evolution, 
that  while  his  body  was  naturally  evolved  he  received  a 
specific  "spiritual  influx" — Summary  of  the  facts  used  by 
Darwin  and  others  in  support  of  the  evolutionist  inter- 
pretation— As  in  other  cases,  these  are  not  demonstrative, 
but  they  have  a  cumulative  convincingness — The  difficulty 
of  the  problem  of  the  Ascent  of  Man — We  do  not  know 
how  he  arose,  or  whence  he  came,  or  when  he  began,  or 
where  it  was — His  antiquity  is  certain,  but  little  else — Man 


xiv  Summary  of  Contents 

as  a  "Mutation"— Possible  factors  in  the  early  evolution 
of  Man — Repugnance  to  the  scientific  interpretation, 
partly  due  to  misunderstanding,  partly  aesthetic,  partly 
ethical — The  value  of  a  product  is  independent  of  its  re- 
mote origin — Man  is  not  a  masterpiece  "  accidentally  pro- 
duced"; Man  forms  a  new  departure  in  the  gradual  un- 
folding of  Nature's  predestined  scheme — The  evolutionist 
interpretation  is  not  necessarily  naturalistic — A  comparison 
and  contrast  of  animal  behavior  and  human  conduct — As 
regards  animals,  we  may  speak  of  intelligence,  but  not  of 
reason;  of  words,  but  not  of  language;  of  behavior,  but 
not  of  conduct — In  what  sense,  if  any,  can  it  be  said  that 
human  conduct  has  evolved  from  animal  behaviour  ? — The 
cerebral  mutation  was  the  Rubicon — Increasing  cerebral 
complexity  made  a  higher  intelligence  possible,  language 
and  conscience  date  from  that  dawn — Certain  raw  ma- 
terials of  conduct  in  the  form  of  primary  impulses  were 
inherited  from  pre-human  ancestry,  but  Man,  who  reasoned, 
spoke,  and  controlled  his  behaviour  in  relation  to  more  than 
merely  perceptual  ends,  raised  these  to  a  higher  power — 
Huxley's  thesis  as  regards  the  contrast  between  human 
and  cosmic  evolution — Reasons  for  dissenting  from  Hux- 
ley's conclusion — Value  of  the  evolutionary  conception  of 
Man — It  clears  things  up,  it  suggests  effort,  it  is  hope- 
inspiring,  it  makes  the  whole  cosmic  process  more  intel- 
ligible—Retrospect on  the  riddles  which  our  brief  survey 
has  disclosed— They  bring  us  back  to  the  wonder  with 
which  we  began— The  riddles  of  things  as  they  are — We 
formulate  sequences  in  terms  which  are  not  self-explan- 
atory— The  riddles  of  the  history  of  things— Riddles  as  to 
origins— The  riddle  of  the  death  of  the  Earth— The  riddle 
of  suffering — The  philosophical  and  the  scientific  outlook 
— The  limitations  of  science — Anima  animans — Meaning 
of  the  title  "The  Bible  of  Nature." 


I 

THE  WONDER  OF  THE  WORLD 


THE  WONDER  OF  THE  WORLD 

The  Sense  of  Wonder. — Perhaps  even  the  most 
"profane  person"  has  some  secret  shrine  where 
he  allows  himself  at  least  to  wonder.  What  may 
not  the  object  of  this  wonder  be — the  grandeur 
of  the  star-strewn  sky,  the  mystery  of  the  moun- 
tains, the  sea  eternally  new,  the  way  of  the  eagle 
in  the  air,  the  meanest  flower  that  blows,  the  look 
in  a  child's  eyes?  Somewhere,  sometime,  some- 
how, every  one  confesses,  "This  is  too  wonderful 
for  me." 

The  sense  of  wonder  varies  in  expression  ac- 
cording to  race  and  temperament,  according  to 
health  and  habits,  according  to  its  degree  of  culture 
and  freedom.  Caliban's  is  different  from  Ariel's, 
and  Prospero's  from  both.  But  whatever  be  its 
particular  expression,  the  sense  of  wonder  is  one 
of  the  saving  graces  of  life,  and  he  who  is  without 
it  might  as  well  be  dead.  It  lies  at  the  roots  of 
both  science  and  philosophy,  and  it  has  been  in  all 
ages  one  of  the  footstools  of  religion.  When  it 
dies  one  of  the  lights  of  life  goes  out.  Keeping  to 
the  outer  world  of  nature,  let  us  illustrate  what  may 
be  called  the  mainsprings  of  rational  wonder. 
3 


4  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Abundance  of  Power. — In  ancient  days  when  mas- 
tery of  the  forces  of  nature  was  not  even  dreamed 
of,  men  were  almost  overwhelmed  by  their  sense 
of  the  abundance  of  power  in  the  world.  Unable 
to  see  much  order  in  this  power,  unable  to  utilize 
it,  they  took  what  came  and  wondered.  Often 
personifying  the  various  forces,  they  brought 
thank-offerings  when  these  were  benign  and  sacri- 
fices when  they  were  hostile.  Short-sighted  and 
timorous,  they  paid  heavy  premiums  to  experience, 
and  yet  were  slow  to  learn.  \It  may  be,  however, 
that  they  excelled  us,  in  whom  familiarity  has  bred 
commonplaceness,  in  their  keener  sense  of  the 
abundance  of  power  in  the  world.  \  It  seems  some- 
times as  if  we  needed  an  earthquake,  a  volcanic 
eruption,  a  tornado,  a  comet,  to  re-awaken  us  to  a 
sense  of  the  world  Swa/us,  to  the  powers  that  make 
our  whole  solar  system  travel  in  space  toward  an 
unknown  goal,  that  keep  our  earth  together  and 
awhirling  round  the  sun,  that  sway  the  tides 
and  rule  the  winds,  that  mould  the  dew-drop  and 
build  the  crystal,  that  clothe  the  lily  and  give  us 
energy  for  every  movement  and  every  thought 
— in  short  that  keep  the  whole  system  of  things 
agoing. 

"Trees  in  their  blooming, 
Tides  in  their  flowing, 
Stars  in  their  circling, 
Tremble  with  song." 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  5 

And  one  note  in  that  song  is  Power,  which  we  can- 
not think  of  as  beginning  or  as  ending,  which  never 
seems  to  alter  in  quantity  though  it  is  always  chang- 
ing its  quality,  which  is  not  a  whit  less  wonderful 
though  we  say  that  it  is  "  all  electricity  "  and  cer- 
tainly not  less  wonderful  if  we  are  able  to  say 

"God  on  His  throne 
Is  Eldest  of  poets, 
Unto  His  measures 
Moveth  the  whole." 

A  Modern  Instance. — Let  us  take  a  now  familiar 
instance  of  this  Power.  Besides  theoretical  and 
possibly  practical  results,  there  has  been  some  emo- 
tional gain  in  the  recent  startling  discoveries  which 
centre  around  the  word  radio-activity.  From  a 
ton  of  pitch-blende,  the  investigators  extract  less 
than  a  grain  of  radium,  which,  apart  from  living 
matter,  is  the  most  wonderful  kind  of  matter  in  the 
world.  Incessantly  and  without  appreciable  loss 
it  pours  forth  heat  and  light;  its  rays  penetrate 
thick  plates  of  metal,  excite  phosphorescence  in 
other  bodies,  discharge  electroscopes  from  a  dis- 
tance, and  have  strange  effects  on  living  creatures. 
We  are  told  that  radium  gives  off  not  only  recti- 
linear darting  rays,  but  also  a  gaseous  emanation 
which  is  radio-active,  which  precipitates  itself  as 
a  "something"  on  various  kinds  of  bodies  and 
makes  them  also  radio-active.  It  decays  and  be- 


6  The  Bible  of  Nature 

comes,  in  part  at  least,  something  else — namely, 
that  rare  stuff  called  Helium,  which  Sir  Norman 
Lockyer  found  many  years  ago  in  the  Sun,  which 
also  occurs  in  warm  springs  and  rare  minerals. 
One  kind  of  radium  ray  is  said  to  consist  of  streams 
of  little  bodies,  which  travel  at  the  rate  of  20,000 
miles  a  second,  40,000  times  faster  than  a  rifle  bul- 
let; another  kind  is  said  to  consist  of  streams  of 
little  bodies,  darting  forth  at  the  prodigious  rate 
of  100,000  miles  a  second;  another  kind  is  said  to 
consist  of  pulses  in  the  ether,  which  can  penetrate 
a  foot  of  solid  iron.  In  spite  of  all  the  energy  it 
gives  off,  radium  is  but  slowly  used  up.  It  is 
possibly  being  continually  formed  afresh  in  the 
earth,  perhaps  from  Uranium.  A  small  quantity 
diffused  in  the  earth  will  suffice  to  compensate  for 
all  the  loss  of  heat  by  radiation;  a  fraction  of  one 
per  cent,  in  the  sun  would  compensate  for  all  its 
immense  loss  of  heat.  Is  this  not  "too  wonderful 
for  us?" 

Power  of  Life. — We  do  not  perhaps  think  much 
about  it,  but  the  abundance  of  power  in  living 
creatures  is  truly  wonderful,  just  as  wonderful  as 
radium.  Call  them  engines — animate  systems 
which  transform  matter  and  energy — they  are 
more  perfect  than  our  best  engines,  the  perfection 
being  measured  by  the  relation  between  the  energy 
which  enters  them  and  the  work  they  do.  "  Joule 
pointed  out  that  not  only  does  an  animal  much 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  7 

more  nearly  resemble  in  its  function  an  electro- 
magnetic engine  than  it  resembles  a  steam-engine, 
but  also  that  it  is  a  much  more  efficient  engine; 
that  is  to  say,  an  animal,  for  the  same  amount  of 
potential  energy  of  food  or  fuel  supplied  to  it — call 
it  fuel,  to  compare  it  with  other  engines — gives  you 
a  larger  amount  converted  into  work  than  any 
engine  which  we  can  construct  physically."  Lang- 
ley  pointed  out  that  a  fire-fly  is  a  much  more  eco- 
nomical light-producer  than  any  human  lumi- 
niferous  device.  As  a  physicist  looking  at  life  and 
puzzling  over  its  dynamic  mystery,  Professor  Joly 
advanced  the  following  interesting  and  important 
proposition:  "While  the  transfer  of  energy  into 
any  inanimate  material  system  is  attended  by  ef- 
fects retardative  to  the  transfer  and  conducive  to 
dissipation,  the  transfer  of  energy  into  any  ani- 
mate material  system  is  attended  by  effects  con- 
ducive to  the  transfer  and  retardative  of  dissipa- 
tion." From  a  dynamic  point  of  view  it  is 
wonderful  to  watch,  let  us  say,  a  few  water-mites 
imprisoned  in  a  vessel  where  the  supply  of  food  is 
of  the  smallest.  Day  after  day,  week  after  week,  we 
see  them  darting  about  with  extreme  rapidity,  we 
hardly  ever  catch  them  napping.  They  cannot 
evade  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  but 
it  certainly  seems  as  if  they  did. 

Or  take  another  entirely  different  case — the  de- 
structive power  of  microbes.     It  seems  certain 


8  The  Bible  of  Nature 

that  some  microbes  in  certain  phases  can  pass 
through  the  most  carefully  constructed  water-filter 
and  are  invisible  to  the  best  microscope.  We  know 
that  they  pass  through  by  the  results;  we  can  get 
cultures  of  them  out  of  the  water.  Yet  these  in- 
visibly minute  creatures  have  so  much  constructive 
power  that  from  one,  in  a  few  hours,  a  million 
may  result,  and  so  much  destructive  power  that 
a  small  dose  of  them  soon  kills  an  ox. 

Abundance  of  Life. — We  need  only  allude  to  the 
actual  abundance  of  life.  The  roll-call  of  animals 
includes  so  many  tens  of  thousands  of  species  that, 
so  far  as  our  power  of  realizing  the  total  is  con- 
cerned, it  is  hardly  affected  when  we  note  that 
more  than  half  of  them  are  insects.  More  than 
two  thousand  years  ago  Aristotle  recorded  a  total 
of  about  500  animals,  but  there  may  be  more  new 
species  in  a  single  volume  of  the  Challenger  Re- 
ports. We  speak  of  the  number  of  stars,  yet  more 
than  one  family  of  insects  is  credited  with  includ- 
ing as  many  different  species  as  there  are  stars  to 
count  with  the  unaided  eye  on  a  clear  night.  And 
besides  the  number  of  different  kinds,  think  of  the 
uncountable  numbers  of  individuals. 

"  But  what  an  endlesse  worke  have  I  on  hand 
To  count  the  sea's  abundant  progeny 
Whose  fruitful  seede  farre  passeth  those  on  land, 
And  also  those  which  wonne  in  th'  azure  sky, 
How  much  more  eath  to  tell  the  starres  on  hy, 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  9 

Albe  they  endlesse  seem  in  estimation, 

Than  to  recount  the  sea's  posterity, 

So  fertile  be  the  floods  in  generation, 

So  huge  their  numbers  and  so  numberless  their  nation." 

The  explorers  of  the  Antarctic  seas  tell  us  that 
from  these  cold  waters  it  was  quite  the  usual  thing 
to  take  from  ten  to  thirty  thousand  specimens  of  a 
certain  crustacean  in  a  single  haul.  In  short,  the 
naturalist  as  well  as  the  poet  spoke  when  Goethe 
celebrated  Nature's  wealth:  "In  floods  of  life,  in  a 
storm  of  activity,  she  moves  and  works  above  and 
beneath,  working  and  weaving,  an  endless  mo- 
tion, birth  and  death,  an  infinite  ocean,  a  change- 
ful web,  a  glowing  life;  she  plies  at  the  roaring 
loom  of  time  and  weaves  a  living  garment  for  God." 

Immensities. — The  simple  and  open  mind  is  al- 
ways impressed  by  the  bigness  of  Nature.  Our 
ancestors  were  thrilled  by  the  apparently  boundless 
and  unfathomable  sea,  by  the  apparently  unending 
plains,  by  the  mountains  whose  tops  were  lost  in 
the  clouds,  by  the  expanse  of  the  heavens;  and 
our  children  happily  have  still  something  of  the 
same  impression  of  the  wide,  wide  world.  It  is 
the  impression  of  immensity — of  practical  infini- 
tude, and  it  is  worth  having  and  keeping.  Nowa- 
days, of  course,  we  measure  everything,  and  the 
wonder  tends  to  fade.  Every  day  we  get  some 
fresh  instance  of  the  way  in  which  "Science  reaches 
forth  her  arms  to  feel  from  world  to  world,  and 


10  The  Bible  of  Nature 

charms  her  secret  from  the  latest  moon."  We 
annihilate  distance  with  our  deep  devices  and 
make  the  ether  carry  our  signals.  We  bring  the 
moon  so  near  that  our  maps  of  it  are  better  than 
those  of  Africa  three  generations  ago.  We  meas- 
ure the  distance  of  the  stars;  we  analyze  the  chemi- 
cal composition  of  the  sun.  It  is  enough  to  re- 
call Fraunhofer's  fine  epitaph,  "Approximavit 
sidera." 

Thus  size  and  distance  are  ceasing  to  impress 
us  as  they  impressed  our  forefathers.  We  -are  be- 
coming accustomed  to  the  immensities.  Yet  we 
do  well  to  sit  down  quietly  at  times  under  the 
starry  heavens,  and  remember  that  though  light 
travels  186,000  miles  a  second,  we  might  perchance 
observe  the  twinkling  of  a  star  that  had  gone  out; 
that  when  we  look  at  a  Centauri,  which  lies  some 
ten  billions  of  miles  nearer  to  us  than  any  other 
known  star,  we  see  it,  not  as  it  is  to-night,  but  as  it 
was  more  than  four  years  ago;  that,  though  our 
sun  is  93,000,000  of  miles  away  (and  no  one  of  us 
has  any  mental  picture  of  what  a  million  is),  the 
farthest  star  we  can  see  is  a  million  times  farther 
off;  that  for  every  one  of  the  few  thousands  (say 
8,000)  of  stars  we  can  see  with  our  unaided  eyes 
there  are  thousands  unseen  (say,  a  hundred  mil- 
lions); and  that  our  whole  solar  system  is  equiv- 
alent in  size  to  no  more  than  a  corner  of  the  Milky 
Way.  In  the  heavens  the  navigator  sails  in  a 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  11 

practically  infinite  ocean;  for  leagues  and  leagues 
beyond  there  is  always  more  sea.  There  is  room 
for  wonder. 

Manifoldness. — Another  primary  impression  of 
Nature  is  that  of  manifoldness.  Star  differs  from 
star  in  glory.  Every  mountain  has  its  individ- 
uality. There  are  over  eighty  different  kinds  of 
elements.  The  number  of  different  minerals  is 
legion.  "All  flesh  is  not  the  same  flesh,  but  there 
is  one  flesh  of  men,  another  flesh  of  beasts,  an- 
other of  fishes,  and  another  of  birds."  From  one 
small  island  (Great  Britain)  we  have  a  record  of 
over  four  hundred  different  kinds  of  birds,  each 
a  very  distinctive  personality.  In  the  Challenger 
Report  on  Radiolarians,  Haeckel  deals  with  about 
five  thousand  different  species,  all  of  fascinating 
beauty.  A  single  year's  volume  of  the  Zoologi- 
cal Record  may  register  more  new  species  than 
were  included  in  the  whole  of  Linne's  "Sys- 
tema  Naturae."  Whether  we  gather  shells  on 
the  shore  or  collect  snow  crystals;  whether  we 
study  birds  or  brambles,  hydroids  or  hawkweeds, 
we  get  the  -same  impression  of  an  overflowing 
form-fountain,  of  prodigal  multiplicity,  of  endless 
resources. 

Intricacy. — An  allied  impression,  unknown  to  the 
ancients,  is  that  of  intricacy.  The  telescope  re- 
veals a  hundred  million  heavenly  bodies;  the  micro- 
scope reveals  another  unseen  world  of  the  infinitely 


12  The  Bible  of  Nature 

small,  each  member  of  which  is  nevertheless  in- 
tricate. One  of  President  D.  S.  Jordan's  epi- 
grams is  unforgetable,  "The  simplest  organism  we 
know  is  far  more  complex  than  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States."  The  body  of  an  ant  is 
many  times  more  visibly  intricate  than  a  steam 
engine;  its  brain,  as  Darwin  said,  is  perhaps  the 
most  marvellous  speck  of  matter  in  the  universe. 
Our  brain  is  such  a  labyrinth  of  nerve  paths  that 
it  takes  years  to  become  even  superficially  familiar 
with  it.  The  body  of  an  animal  may  consist  of 
millions  of  unit-areas  or  cells;  each  shows  a  com- 
plex foam-like  or  net-like  living  matter,  including 
a  nucleus  which  is  a  microcosm  in  itself.  Within 
each  nucleus  there  are  stainable  bodies  or  chromo- 
somes, twenty-four  of  them  in  each  of  our  body- 
cells,  and  these  are  built  up  of  smaller  microsomes, 
and  each  chromosome  is  split  longitudinally  when 
the  cell  divides.  And  when  we  pass  beyond  the 
visibly  intricate,  to  the  coarse-grainedness  which 
the  physicists  find  it  necessary  to  postulate  in 
matter,  the  intricacy  is  multiplied  beyond  all  our 
powers  of  picturing.  They  say  that  in  a  tiny 
organism  no  larger  than  a  minute-hand  on  a  dainty 
watch  there  is  a  molecular  intricacy  which  might 
be  represented  by  an  Atlantic  liner  packed  with 
such  watches.  Some  say  that  the  simplest  of  all 
atoms — an  atom  of  hydrogen — must  have  a  consti- 
tution as  complex  as  a  constellation,  with  about 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  13 

800  separate  parts.     Here  again  there  is  room  for 
some  rational  wonder. 

Pervading  Order. — In  spite  of  all  this  multiplicity 
and  intricacy,  there  is  a  pervading  order.  The 
world  is  not  a  curiosity  shop,  but  a  Kosmos. 
There  do  not  seem  to  be  many  big  collisions  in  the 
crowded  heavens,  and  there  is  no  hint  of  fortuity. 
The  clockwork  goes  so  steadily  that  the  return  of 
a  comet  can  be  predicted  to  a  night.  There  have 
been  cataclysms  in  the  history  of  the  Earth,  but 
they  are  not  more  disorderly  than  the  cracking  of 
the  sun-baked  clay.  There  is  order  in  the  relations 
of  the  atomic  weights  of  the  .chemical  elements 
(MendeleefFs  "Periodic  Law"),  just  as  there  is 
order  in  the  relations  of  the  planets.  The  wind 
bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and  yet  we  know,  as 
Tyndall  said,  that  "  the  Italian  wind,  gliding  over 
the  crest  of  the  Matterhorn,  is  as  firmly  ruled  as 
the  earth  in  its  orbital  revolution  round  the  sun; 
and  the  fall  of  its  vapour  into  clouds  is  exactly  as 
much  a  matter  of  necessity  as  the  return  of  the 
seasons."1  Our  body  is  a  most  intricate  engine, 
yet  how  smoothly  it  works  if  we  give  it  a  chance. 
Creatures  living  naturally  may  have  parasites,  but 
they  hardly  ever  show  any  disease.  That  comes 
when  man  tampers  with  them  or  with  their  sur- 
roundings. Natural  death  is  a  most  orderly  phe- 
nomenon. And  even  the  disorders  which  man 
'"Fragments  of  Science." 


14  The  Bible  of  Nature 

brings  about,  are,  as  statistics  show,  appallingly 
orderly  in  their  occurrence.  In  short,  it  is  not  a 
multiverse  we  live  in,  but  a  universe.  It  is  not 
"all  weather." 

We  cannot  deny  that  there  are  occurrences 
which  give  us  pause  in  our  assertion  of  pervading 
order — but  most  of  these  are  within  the  human 
realm,  and  many  of  them  are  by  no  means  inevit- 
able. Man  is  extraordinarily  callous  in  the  way  of 
taking  risks,  and  perhaps  the  terrible  tragedy  of 
much  in  human  life  is  needed  as  a  spur  to  incite 
us  to  put  an  end  to  it.  Most  people  profess  to  be 
shocked  at  the  wastage  of  life,  often  very  indis- 
criminate, involved  in  many  microbic  diseases  or 
in  war,  and  yet  the  bulk  of  us  do  not  really  care  so 
very  much — till  the  wolves  attack  our  own  flocks. 
If  we  did  care  enough,  we  should  soon  put  a  stop 
to  both  infectious  diseases  and  war.  A  great 
authority  has  said  that  "all  epidemic  disease 
could  be  abolished  in  fifty  years."  Perhaps  this 
is  too  sanguine,  perhaps  the  expert  underesti- 
mated the  social  cost  of  the  riddance,  but  in 
any  case  the  declaration  cannot  be  left  out  of 
consideration.  It  does  not  take  very  long  to  rid  a 
country  of  rabies.  Why  not  of  other  forms  of 
madness  ? 

Network  of  Interrelations. — It  is  part  of  this  order 
that  the  world  is  a  network  of  interrelations. 
Part  is  linked  to  part  by  sure,  though  often  subtle, 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  15 

bonds,  and  nude  isolation  is  as  rare  in  nature  as  a 
vacuum.  Nature  is  a  vast  system  of  linkages. 
Every  one  knows  how  Darwin,  by  showing  that 
earthworms  have  made  most  of  the  fertile  soil  of 
the  world,  verified  in  detail  what  Gilbert  White  had 
foreseen  in  1777:  "The  most  insignificant  insects 
and  reptiles  are  of  much  more  consequence  and 
have  much  more  influence  in  the  economy  of 
nature  than  the  incurious  are  aware  of .  .  .  .  Earth- 
worms, though  in  appearance  a  small  and  des- 
picable link  in  the  chain  of  Nature,  yet,  if  lost, 
would  make  a  lamentable  chasm."  What  we 
may  call  "nutritive  chains"  connect  many  forms 
of  life — higher  animals  feeding  upon  lower  through 
long  series,  the  records  of  which  read  like  the  story 
of  "The  House  that  Jack  Built."  The  flowering 
plants  and  the  higher  insects  have  grown  up 
throughout  long  ages  together,  in  alternate  influ- 
ence and  mutual  perfecting.  Every  one  knows 
Darwin's  "cats  and  clover"  story,  and  it  is  but  a 
type.  It  was  Darwin  also  who  removed  a  ball 
of  mud  from  the  foot  of  a  bird,  and  found  that 
fourscore  seeds  germinated  from  it.  Not  a  bird 
can  fall  to  the  ground  without  sending  a  throb 
through  a  wide  circle.  We  can  follow  the  circu- 
lation of  matter  from  the  mud  by  the  pond-side 
till  it  becomes  part  of  the  physical  basis  of  clear 
thinking.  We  can  connect  the  lady's  toilet-table 
with  the  African  slave-trade,  or  the  demand  for 


16  The  Bible  of  Nature 

well-burnished  bicycles  with  the  extermination  of 
the  walrus.     As  Shelley  wrote: 

"Nothing  in  this  world  is  single; 
All  things  by  a  law  Divine 
In  each  other's  being  mingle!" 

Only  the  working  naturalist  knows  the  extent 
to  which  living  creatures  are  interlinked  in  nature. 
There  is  a  solidarity  of  kinship,  but  there  is  also 
a  solidarity  of  vital  relations.  We  are  familiar 
with  the  correlation  of  organs  in  the  living  body, 
tmt  there  is  also  a  correlation  of  organisms  in  the 
web  of  life.  The  young  of  the  fresh-water  mussel 
must  be  nurtured  for  a  time  as  hangers-on  to 
fishes;  there  is  a  fresh- water  fish  (the  bitterling, 
Rhodeus  amarus)  whose  young  must  be  nurtured 
for  a  while  inside  the  gills  of  the  mussel.  And 
this  is  but  an  instance  among  thousands.  We  re- 
call a  remarkable  passage  of  Locke's:  "This  is 
certain,  things,  however  absolute  and  entire  they 
seem  in  themselves,  are  but  retainers  to  other 
parts  of  nature,  for  that  which  they  are  most  taken 
notice  of  by  us.  Their  observable  qualities, 
actions,  and  powers  are  owing  to  something  with- 
out them;  and  there  is  not  so  complete  and  per- 
fect a  part  that  we  know  of  nature,  which  does  not 
owe  the  being  it  has  and  the  excellence  of  it  to  its 
neighbors;  and  we  must  not  confine  our  thoughts 
within  the  surface  of  any  body,  but  look  a  great 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  17 

deal  farther,  to  comprehend  perfectly  those  qual- 
ities that  are  in  it." 

Over  a  ploughed  field  in  the  summer  morning 
we  see  the  spider-webs  in  thousands,  glistening 
with  dew-drops,  and  this  is  an  emblem  of  the  in- 
tricacy of  the  threads  in  the  web  of  life — to  be  seen 
more  and  more  as  our  eyes  grow  clear.  Or,  is  not 
the  face  of  nature  like  the  surface  of  a  gentle 
stream,  where  hundreds  of  dimpling  circles  touch 
and  influence  one  another  in  an  intricate  com- 
plexity of  action  and  reaction  beyond  the  ken  of 
the  wisest? 

Universal  Flux. — Another  aspect  of  the  world, 
which  cannot  be  clearly  thought  of  without  a  feel- 
ing of  wonder,  was  expressed  in  the  old  saying  of 
Heraclitus :  Trdvra  pel,  all  things  are  in  flux.  The 
rain  falls;  the  springs  are  fed;  the  streams  are  filled 
and  flow  to  the  sea;  the  mist  rises  from  the  deep 
and  the  clouds  are  formed,  which  break  again  on 
the  mountain-side.  The  plant  captures  air, 
water,  and  salts,  and  with  the  sun's  aid,  builds 
them  up  by  vital  alchemy  into  complex  sub- 
stances, incorporating  these  into  itself.  The  ani- 
mal eats  the  plant  and  a  new  incarnation  begins. 
All  flesh  is  grass.  The  animal  becomes  part  of 
another  animal,  and  the  reincarnation  continues. 
The  living  thing  dies  and  returns  to  the  earth,  the 
bundle  of  life  all  broken.  The  microbes  of  decay 
break  down  the  dead,  and  there  is  a  return  to  air 


18  The  Bible  of  Nature 

and  water  and  salts.  Nothing  is  lost,  but  nothing 
is  permanent.  All  things  flow.  As  Huxley  said: 
"Natural  knowledge  tends  more  and  more  to  the 
conclusion  that '  all  the  choir  of  heaven  and  furni- 
ture of  the  earth*  are  the  transitory  forms  of  par- 
cels of  cosmic  substance  wending  along  the  road 
of  evolution,  from  nebulous  potentiality,  through 
endless  growths  of  sun  and  planet  and  satellite; 
through  all  varieties  of  matter;  through  infinite 
diversities  of  life  and  thought;  possibly,  through 
modes  of  being  of  which  we  neither  have  a  con- 
ception, nor  are  competent  to  form  any,  back  to  the 
undefinable  latency  from  which  they  arose.  Thus 
the  most  obvious  attribute  of  the  cosmos  is  its  im- 
permanence.  It  assumes  the  aspect  not  so  much 
of  a  permanent  entity  as  of  a  changeful  process, 
in  which  nought  endures  save  the  flow  of  energy, 
and  the  rational  order  which  pervades  it." 

It  may  be  permissible  to  quote,  from  Dr. 
J.  Theodor  Merz,  Riickert's  beautiful  poem, 
"  Chidher,"  as  a  fine  expression  of  the  cyclic  con- 
ception of  existence: 

"Chidher,  the  ever  youthful,  spake: 
I  passed  a  city  on  my  way, 
A  man  in  a  garden  fruit  did  break, 
I  asked  how  long  the  town  here  lay  ? 
He  spoke,  and  broke  on  as  before, 
'The  town  stands  ever  on  this  shore, 
And  will  thus  stand  forevermore.' 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  19 

"And  when  five  hundred  years  were  gone 
I  came  the  same  road  as  anon; 
Then  not  a  mark  of  town  I  met. 
A  shepherd  on  the  flute  did  play, 
The  cattle  leaf  and  foliage  ate. 
I  asked  how  long  is  the  town  away? 
He  spake,  and  piped  on  as  before, 
'One  plant  is  green  when  the  other's  o'er, 
This  is  my  pasture  forevermore.' 

"And  when  five  hundred  years  were  gone 
I  came  the  same  road  as  anon, 
Then  did  I  find  with  waves  a  lake, 
A  man  the  net  cast  in  the  bay, 
And  when  he  paused  from  his  heavy  take, 
I  asked  since  when  the  lake  here  lay? 
He  spake,  and  laughed  my  question  o'er, 
'As  long  as  the  waves  break  as  of  yore, 
One  fishes  and  fishes  on  this  shore.' 

"And  when  five  hundred  years  were  gone 
I  came  the  same  way  as  anon. 
A  wooded  place  I  then  did  see, 
And  a  hermit  in  a  cell  did  stay; 
He  felled  with  an  axe  a  mighty  tree. 
I  asked  since  when  the  wood  here  lay? 
He  spake:  'The  wood's  a  shelter  forevermore 
I  ever  lived  upon  this  floor, 
And  the  trees  will  grow  on  as  before.' 

"And  when  five  hundred  years  were  gone 
I  came  the  same  way  as  anon, 
But  then  I  found  a  city  filled 
With  market's  clamour  shrill  and  gay. 
I  asked  how  long  is  the  city  built, 


20  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Where's  wood  and  sea  and  shepherd's  play? 

They  pondered  not  my  question  o'er, 

But  cried:  'So  was  it  long  before, 

And  will  go  on  forevermore.' 

And  when  five  hundred  years  are  gone 

I'll  go  the  same  way  as  anon."  1 

Persistence  amid  Change. — But  in  spite  of  all  this 
ceaseless  flux  there  is  steadiness  and  persistence. 
The  most  familiar  instance  is  the  living  body, 
which  is  continually  changing — in  whirlpool-like 
fashion — and  yet  remains  very  much  the  same 
year  in,  year  out.  From  one  point  of  view  vital 
activity  is  in  great  part  a  process  of  combustion 
—often  very  intense — yet  not  less  remarkable 
than  the  ceaseless  change  is  the  retention  of  in- 
tegrity. 

1  Quoted  from  J.  T.  Merz's  "  History  of  European 
Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  Vol.  II,  p.  289. 

Goethe  summed  up  the  Heraclitian  doctrine  of  uni- 
versal flux  in  his  well-known  poem  "Bins  und  Alles." 
"Und  umzuschaffen  das  Geschaffne, 
Damit  sich's  nicht  zum  Starren  waffne, 
Wirkt  ewiges,  lebendiges  Thun. 
Und  was  nicht  war,  nun  will  es  werden, 
Zu  reinen  Sonnen,  farbigen  Erden, 
In  keinem  Falle  darf  es  ruhn. 

Es  soil  sich  regen,  schaffend  handeln, 
Erst  sich  gestalten,  dann  verwandeln, 
Nur  scheinbar  steht's  Momente  still, 
Das  Ewige  regt  sich  fort  in  alien; 
Denn  alles  muss  in  Nichts  zerfallen, 
Wenn  es  im  Sein  beharren  will." 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  21 

So,  on  a  larger  scale,  we  see  in  racial  evolution 
the  twofold  aspect  of  flux  and  continuity,  of  change 
and  persistence,  of  deviation  and  inertia,  of  vari- 
ation and  hereditary  resemblance.  Alle  Gestalten 
sind  ahnlich,  und  keine  gleichet  der  andern.  Hux- 
ley put  the  point  with  his  usual  vividness:  "Flow- 
ers are  the  primers  of  the  morphologist;  those  who 
run  may  read  in  them  uniformity  of  type  amidst 
endless  diversity,  singleness  of  plan  with  complex 
multiplicity  of  detail.  As  a  musician  might  say: 
every  natural  group  of  flowering  plants  is  a  sort  of 
visible  fugue  wandering  about  a  central  theme 
which  is  never  forsaken,  however  it  may,  mo- 
mentarily, cease  to  be  apparent."  ("Life  of 
Owen,"  Vol.  II,  p.  288.) 

In  the  relatively  small  group  of  Alcyonarian 
corals,  with  which  we  happen  to  be  particularly  fa- 
miliar, the  general  plan  of  structure  is  exceedingly 
simple — polyps  give  off  stolons  from  which  other 
polyps  arise  and  the  colony  is  supported  by  some 
sort  of  skeleton — but  the  heterogeneity  of  detail  and 
of  beautiful  architectural  device  beggars  description. 

Even  within  the  same  species  we  can  often  get 
the  same  impression  of  "a  sort  of  visible  fugue 
wandering  about  a  central  theme."  Take,  for 
instance,  the  beautiful  series  of  three  dozen  or  so 
distinct  varieties  of  the  common  snail,  Helix  al- 
ternata,  say,  as  they  are  displayed  in  the  Ameri- 
can Museum  of  Natural  History.  As  Mr.  Fran- 


22  The  Bible  of  Nature 

cis  Galton  puts  it:  "The  organic  world  as  a  whole 
is  a  perpetual  flux  of  changing  types."  And  yet 
there  is  a  not  less  remarkable  stability  of  types, 
and  the  great  styles  of  organic  architecture  are 
after  all  very  few. 

The  Drama  of  Animal  Life. — To  the  naturalist 
there  is  perennial  wonder  in  the  drama  of  animal 
life.  The  more  he  knows  of  animal  behavior,  the 
greater  is  his  wonder.  Let  us  think  of  this  for  a 
moment. 

All  around  us,  except  in  our  cities,  we  see  a 
busy  animal  life,  swayed  by  the  twin  impulses  of 
Hunger  and  Love.  There  is  eager  endeavour  after 
individual  well-being,  there  is  not  less  careful 
effort  which  secures  the  welfare  of  the  young. 
The  former  varies  from  a  keen  and  literal  struggle 
for  subsistence  to  a  gay  pursuit  of  aesthetic  lux- 
uries; the  latter  rises  from  physiologically  necessary 
life-losing  and  instinctive  parental  industry  to  re- 
markable heights  of  what  seem  to  us  like  deliber- 
ate sacrifice  and  affectionate  devotion.  The  old 
question  and  answer  are  fundamental,  for  beast 
as  well  as  man: 

"Warum  treibt  sich  das  Volk  so  und  schreit? 
Es  will  sich  erriahren,  Kinder  zeugen, 
Und  die  nahren  so  gut  es  vermag." 

On  the  one  hand,  we  see  struggle, — struggle 
between  mates,  between  rival  suitors,  between 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  23 

nearly  related  fellows,  between  foes  of  entirely 
diverse  nature,  between  the  powers  of  life  and  the 
merciless  forces  of  the  inorganic  world. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  see  the  love  of  mates, 
family  affection,  mutual  aid  among  kindred,  many 
quaint  partnerships  and  strange  friendships,  and 
intricate  interrelations  implying  at  least  some 
measure  of  mutual  yielding. 

On  the  one  hand,  as  in  a  human  society  or  in  the 
single  body,  we  see  a  regulated  system,  the  har- 
monious working  of  correlated  parts,  mutual  ad- 
justments, and  the  subordination  of  the  individual 
to  the  whole.  On  the  other  hand,  we  see  strug- 
gle, friction,  anarchy,  the  natural  self-assertive- 
ness  of  the  individual  or  of  the  individual  part 
rising  against  the  limitations  imposed  by  environ- 
ing circumstances. 

We  watch  the  wondrous  industry  of  birds  and 
bees  who  work  from  the  dawn  until  the  dusk 
brings  enforced  rest  to  their  brains,  which  we 
know  to  suffer  fatigue  as  ours  do;  on  the  other 
hand,  we  see  the  parasite's  drifting  life  of  ease. 
Here  locust  eats  locust,  and  rat  eats  rat;  there,  in 
the  combat  of  stags,  lover  fights  with  lover  till 
death  conquers  both;  there,  again,  a  mother  ani- 
mal loses  her  life  in  seeking  to  save  her  chil- 
dren. At  one  pole  we  see  simple,  brainless  crea- 
tures pursuing  their  daily  life  with  what  we  can 
hardly  call  more  than  dull  sentience;  at  a  higher 


24  The  Bible  of  Nature 

level  we  marvel  at  an  instinctive  skill  whose  ex- 
pression is  unconscious  art;  finally,  we  are  face  to 
face  with  an  intelligent  behavior  which  seems  at 
once  a  caricature  and  prototype  of  our  own  con- 
duct. 

Let  us  recall,  for  a  moment,  just  one  of  the 
wonders  of  animal  behavior — the  wonder  of  mi- 
gration. There  is  the  migration  of  those  birds 
that  "know  no  winter  in  their  year,"  "wild  birds 
that  change  their  season  in  the  night,  and  wail 
their  way  from  cloud  to  cloud  down  the  long 
wind."  What  journeys  they  take — the  Arctic  Tern 
was  found  by  the  "Scotia"  explorers  in  the  Far 
South!  How  swiftly  they  fly,  how  confidently 
across  the  pathless  sea,  at  night,  at  a  great  alti- 
tude. How  strange  that  the  young  birds  usually 
fly  away  first  in  the  autumn,  without  waiting  for 
those  who  have  made  the  journey  before.  How 
striking  the  fact — proved  for  some  birds — that 
they  may  return  from  their  winter-quarters  to  the 
garden  where  they  spent  the  summer. 

Or  take  as  another  instance  of  migration  the 
life-history  of  the  common  European  eel.  It  be- 
gins its  life  below  the  500  fathom  line  on  the  floor 
of  the  deep  sea — in  that  dark,  cold,  calm,  silent, 
plantless  world;  it  passes  to  the  surface  as  a 
flattened,  transparent  larva  and  lives  an  open-sea 
life  for  over  a  year,  not  eating  anything,  and  grow- 
ing rather  smaller  as  it  grows  older;  it  becomes  a 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  25 

young  eel  or  elver  which  makes  for  the  shore  and 
proceeds  up  the  rivers.  In  .spring  or  early  sum- 
mer legions  of  these  elvers  pass  up  stream,  obedient 
to  their  instinct  to  go  right  ahead  as  long  as  the 
light  lasts.  Before  reaching  such  rivers  as  those 
which  flow  into  the  Eastern  Baltic,  the  young  eels 
have  had  a  journey  of  some  3,000  miles,  for  all  the 
North  European  eels  seem  to  have  their  cradle  in 
the  Atlantic  west  of  the  Faroes,  the  Hebrides, 
Ireland  and  Spain,  where  the  continental  plateau 
shelves  steeply  down  into  the  greater  depths. 
As  the  elvers  pass  up  the  streams  there  is,  accord- 
ing to  some,  a  separation  of  thef  sexes;  the  males 
lag  behind;  the  females  go  further  inland.  Then 
follows  a  long  period  of  growth  in  slow-flowing 
reaches  of  the  rivers  and  in  ponds.  After  some 
years  there  is  a  return  journey  to  the  sea,  and,  as 
far  as  we  know,  the  individual  life  ends  in  giving 
origin  to  new  lives.  There  is  never  any  breeding 
in  fresh  water,  and  there  seems  to  be  no  return 
from  the  deep  sea. 

Adaptations. — One  of  the  most  characteristic 
features  of  the  animate  world  is  the  all-pervading 
fitness.  It  was  Romanes  who  said, "  Wherever  we 
tap  organic  Nature,  it  seems  to  flow  with  purpose." 
We  may  differ  as  to  our  interpretation,  but  the 
fitness  of  living  creatures  as  regards  structure  and 
habits  and  interrelations  is  a  fact.  How  well  the 
structure  of  bone  is  suited  to  stand  strains,  how 


26  The  Bible  of  Nature 

well  the  bird's  skeletal  and  muscular  systems  are 
adapted  for  flight,  how  well  the  heart  is  constructed 
for  its  ceaseless  work,  what  a  fine  instrument  the 
eye  is,  how  readily  the  leaf  insects  escape  detection 
when  they  alight  on  a  branch,  how  effective  a  con- 
trivance is  the  Venus  Fly-trap!  But  so  one  might 
go  on  for  hours. 

To  our  forefathers,  who  were  dominated  by  a 
static  view  of  the  world,  the  subtle  special  fitnesses 
seen  throughout  Nature,  afforded  direct  evidence 
of  the  immediate  action  of  a  Divine  artificer.  We 
do  not  hold  that  view  now,  partly  because  it  is 
rather  a  crude  view,  mainly  because  our  view  of 
Nature  is  no  longer  static  but  kinetic.  Even 
when  the  kinetic  view  was  taken,  it  seemed  to 
some  that  Nature  was  like  a  troublesome  child, 
always  getting  into  scrapes  and  tight  places  so  that 
the  author  of  its  being  might  show  His  skill  in  extri- 
cating it  by  beautiful  contrivance.  But  we  can  give 
a  plausible  history  of  many  of  these  adaptations,  we 
find  them  \n  varied  stages  of  perfection.  There- 
fore the  argument  from  design  has  given  place  to 
a  deeper  recognition  of  rationality.  The  Order  of 
Nature  is  such  that  an  increasing  evolution  of 
fitness  is  possible,  there  is  adaptation  in  cosmic 
evolution  as  a  whole — it  leads  up  to  intelligent, 
moral  persons,  adapted  to  the  intellectual  and 
practical  conquest  of  Nature,  adapted  to  mirror 
the  reason  without  in  the  reason  within.  Our  fore- 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  27 

fathers  were  impressed  by  the  tactics  of  Nature, 
we  are  impressed  by  the  strategy. 

"There  is  a  wider  teleology,"  Huxley  wrote, 
"which  is  not  touched  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
but  is  actually  based  upon  the  fundamental 
proposition  of  evolution." 

Progress. — The  crowning  wonder  of  the  world 
is  that  the  succession  of  events  spells  progress. 
What  we  more  or  less  dimly  discern  in  the  long 
past  is  not  like  the  succession  of  patterns  in  a 
kaleidoscope;  it  is  rather  like  the  sequence  of  stages 
in  the  individual  development  of  a  plant  or  an 
animal, — stages  whose  meaning  is  disclosed  more 
and  more  fully  as  the  development  goes  on.  It  is 
not  a  phantasmagoric  procession  that  the  history  of 
nature  reveals,  it  is  a  drama.  The  solid  earth  is 
more  differentiated  and  integrated  than  a  swarm 
of  meteorites;  it  is  in  some  sense  progress  to  be- 
come fit  to  be  a  home  of  life,  a  home  of  creatures 
who  can  feel  and  understand,  who  can  sometimes 
give  the  earth  more  significance  than  it  had  be- 
fore. All  through  the  ages  we  see  life  slowly 
creeping  upward,  with  many  losses,  but  with 
steady  gains.  Living  creatures  become  nobler, 
their  life  becomes  fuller  and  freer,  there  is  an  in- 
creasing expression  of  the  Psyche,  and  in  man  the 
hitherto  voiceless  Logos — implicit  in  the  pro- 
gressive order — becomes  at  last  articulate.  As 
Lotze  has  said  in  his  " Microcosmus " :  "The 


28  The  Bible  of  Nature 

series  of  cosmic  periods  must  be  a  chain,  each  link 
of  which  is  bound  together  with  every  other  in  the 
unity  of  one  plan.  ...  As  we  required  that  each 
section  of  the  world's  history  should  present  a 
harmony  of  the  elements  firmly  knit  together,  so 
we  must  now  require  that  the  successive  order  of 
these  sections  shall  compose  the  unity  of  an  on- 
ward advancing  melody."  The  unity  of  an  on- 
ward advancing  melody! 

Beauty. — We  have  not  said  anything  in  regard 
to  the  beauty  of  the  world,  partly  because  the 
theme  is  so  difficult,  and  partly  because  no  small 
part  of  the  beauty  is  implied  in  the  order,  the  in- 
tricacy, and  the  fitness  of  things.  It  may  be  safely 
said  that  every  finished  and  normal  living  thing  is 
beautiful — an  artistic  harmony  when  in  its  natural 
setting.  This  suggests  the  truth  of  the  Platonic 
conception  that  a  living  creature  is  harmonious  be- 
cause it  is  the  realization  of  a  single  idea.  The 
only  ugly  plants  are  those  which  have  been  de- 
formed or  discolored  by  cultivation.  The  omni- 
presence of  beauty  in  finished  and  normal  living 
things  must  have  some  meaning,  and  even  if  it 
only  mean  that  something  in  us  responds  pleasur- 
ably  to  what  nature  mints  and  fashions,  that  is  a 
fact  of  great  significance.  Beside  the  remarkable 
verse  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom  which  says:  "Thou 
hast  ordered  all  things  in  measure  and  num- 
ber and  weight" — we  may  rank  its  correlative, 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  29 

"He  has  made  all  things  beautiful  in  their  sea- 
son." 

We  lift  a  tiny  shell  from  the  shore,  and  though 
we  know  that  it  is  simply  an  "exoskeleton," — a 
cuticular  secretion  of  part  of  the  mollusc's  skin, 
we  find  it  exquisitely  fashioned,  "a  miracle  of 
design,"  and  we  must  say  the  same  of  every 
normal  finished  organic  product  in  every  corner 
of  creation. 

In  regard  to  the  beauty  of  organic  structures,  it 
is  perhaps  of  interest  to  remember  that  much  of 
it — much  of  the  best  of  it — is  quite  unseen,  except 
by  the  scientific  searcher.  Much  is  covered  up 
by  the  living  tissue,  as  in  the  exquisite  flinty  skele- 
ton of  the  Venus'  Flower-Basket;  much  is  hidden 
in  the  darkness  of  deep  waters;  much  is  micro- 
scopic. In  many  cases  we  can  justify  the  beauty 
on  utilitarian  grounds,  thus  it  may  be  architectu- 
rally effective  for  resisting  strain  and  stress,  or  it 
may  be  protective  by  harmonizing  with  surround- 
ing color;  in  many  other  cases  it  seems  to  us  as  if 
it  were  sheer  decoration  without  significance,  ex- 
cept that  it  expresses  the  creature  that  makes  it. 

Retrospect. — We  have  tried  to  illustrate  what 
may  be  called  the  basis  of  rational  wonder.  We 
have  spoken  of  the  abundance  of  power,  of  the  im- 
mensities, of  the  manifoldness  and  intricacy  of 
things,  of  the  order  that  pervades  the  whole,  of 
the  subtle  interrelations  in  the  web  of  life,  of  the 


30  The  Bible  of  Nature 

changefulness  of  everything,  of  the  fitness  of  liv- 
ing creatures,  of  the  progressive  trend  of  things, 
and  of  the  beauty  which  is  everywhere. 

Wonder  and  Knowledge. — Thinking  of  these 
wonders  arouses  two  general  reflections.  The 
first  of  these,  we  may  put  in  the  form  of  a  question. 
Is  any  one  thing  really  more  wonderful  than  an- 
other ?  Does  it  not  in  great  part  depend  on  how 
much  we  know  about  a  thing,  whether  we  call  it 
wonderful  or  not? 

We  pick  up  a  pebble  from  the  road  and  throw  it 
carelessly  away.  The  geologist  picks  it  up,  and 
begins  to  tell  us  its  history,  that  it  is  water- worn, 
though  there  is  no  longer  any  water  near,  that  it 
is  part  of  a  disguised  raised  beach  through  which 
the  road  has  been  cut,  that  it  is  a  piece  of  jasper 
which  was  fused  under  great  pressure  millions  of 
years  ago,  that  it  must  have  travelled  far,  swept 
down  by  an  ancient  river  to  a  now  shrunken  sea, 
and  so  on.  Before  he  has  gone  far  into  his  story, 
we  are  interested,  our  horizon  becomes  more  dis- 
tant, and  we  soon  begin  to  wonder. 

We  brush  aside  the  common  weeds,  which  we 
have  seen  so  often  that  we  have  almost  ceased  to 
see  them  at  all — yellow  primroses  and  nothing 
more — sometimes,  in  fact,  not  so  much.  But  we 
take  time  to  look  at  them,  and  how  beautiful  they 
become  in  our  eyes,  how  intricate,  how  full  of  indi- 
viduality. We  take  time  to  study  them,  with  their 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  31 

parts  so  perfectly  correlated  and  so  well  adapted 
to  their  surroundings;  we  learn  something  of  their 
relationships  and  long  pedigree,  discovering,  it 
may  be,  that  their  race  is  much  older  than  our 
own;  we  enter  the  laboratory  of  the  leaf  and  study 
the  strange  alchemy  that  goes  on  there,  the  raising 
of  dead  raw  materials  to  the  level  of  livingness;  we 
find  that  its  substances  are  breaking  down  and 
being  built  up  again — a  ceaseless  combustion, 
"nee  tamen  consumebatur";  we  watch  the  plant 
grow  from  the  invisible  to  the  visible,  from  one 
cell  to  a  million  of  cells,  from  apparent  simplicity 
to  obvious  complexity;  we  see  the  bee  come  to 
visit  it,  and  the  quaint  give-and-take  that  occurs; 
we  see  the  storing  up  of  treasure  for  a  new  gener- 
ation, and  that  generation  being  born;  we  watch 
the  leaf  withering  and  the  flower  fading,  and  we 
often  see  the  return  of  all  but  the  seeds  to  the 
level  of  the  not-living  once  more.  Without  being 
insincere,  without  being  more  than  awake  to  the 
wonder  of  the  commonplace,  may  we  not  say: 

"Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies; 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand 
Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 

We  lift  aside  the  earthworm  which  lay  adying  on 
the  foot-path,  so  contemptible  that  we  say  "even 


32  The  Bible  of  Nature 

a  worm  will  turn."  But  we  pause  to  think  of  the 
part  earthworms  have  played  in  the  history  of  the 
earth,  and  we  recognize  that  they  are  the  most  use- 
ful animals.  By  their  burrowing  they  loosen  the 
earth,  making  way  for  the  plant  rootlets  and  the 
raindrops;  by  bruising  the  soil  in  their  gizzard  they 
reduce  the  mineral  particles  to  more  useful  form; 
by  burying  the  surface  with  stuff  brought  up  from 
beneath  they  were  ploughers  before  the  plough, 
and  by  burying  leaves  they  have  made  a  great  part 
of  the  vegetable  mould  over  the  whole  earth. 
There  may  be  50,000  or  500,000  of  them  in  an 
acre;  they  often  pass  ten  tons  of  soil  per  acre  per 
annum  through  their  bodies;  and  they  cover  the 
surface  at  the  rate  of  three  inches  in  fifteen  years. 
We  begin  to  respect  them. 

We  inquire  into  their  structure — their  ex- 
quisitely sensitive  skin,  their  highly  developed 
musculature  arranged  like  the  hoops  and  staves 
of  a  barrel,  their  food  canal — an  object-lesson  in 
division  of  labor,  their  red  blood — so  different 
from  our  own,  their  exquisite  kidney-tubes,  their 
tiny  brains  and  their  ventral  chain  of  nerve-centres, 
we  go  into  minutiae  and  we  find  that  it  will  take 
us  many  months  to  work  out  the  details  of  the 
nerve-cells  or  of  the  complex  reproductive  system. 
The  more  we  know,  the  more  the  wonder  grows. 

We  study  their  habits — their  long  nocturnal 
peregrinations  prompted  by  "love"  and  hunger, 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  33 

their  transport  of  little  stones  to  protect  the  en- 
trance to  the  burrows,  their  deft  way  of  dealing 
with  leaves  difficult  to  manage.  We  note  that 
though  eyeless  they  are  very  sensitive  to  light  and 
persistently  avoid  it  when  in  good  health;  that 
though  earless,  they  are  quickly  aware  even  of  the 
light  tread  of  a  hungry  blackbird;  that  though  they 
are  without  anything  like  a  nose,  they  have  a  sense 
of  smell — fine  instances,  in  short,  of  functions  be- 
fore organs.  We  inquire  into  their  relations  with 
other  living  creatures,  and  we  find  that  they  have 
not  a  few  parasites — even  worms  within  worms — 
to  most  of  which,  as  is  usual  among  animals,  they 
have  so  adjusted  themselves  that  nothing  detri- 
mental happens,  while  to  one  kind  at  least — the 
larvae  of  a  fly — they  often  succumb.  We  find  that 
they  are  persecuted  by  numerous  enemies,  such  as 
centipedes,  moles,  and  birds,  and  we  can  then 
better  understand  their  extraordinary  power  of 
growing  a  new  tail  or  even  a  new  head  after  injury 
or  breakage.  We  may  possibly  discover  the  eerie 
collection  of  decapitated  earthworms  which  moles 
sometimes  make  as  a  store  of  food  for  winter — de- 
capitated, so  that  they  cannot  crawl  away  and  yet 
remain  fresh  food,  unable  even  to  regrow  their 
heads  while  they  are  waiting  to  be  eaten,  for  the 
regeneration  does  not  occur  at  a  low  temperature. 
We  may  inquire  into  their  individual  development, 
now  so  well  known  that  we  could  almost  make  a 


34  The  Bible  of  Nature 

kinematograph  of  the  successive  stages,  and  yet 
in  its  essence  absolutely  beyond  our  understand- 
ing. We  may  ask  about  the  numerous  different 
kinds,  some  dwarfs,  some  giants,  about  their  dis- 
tribution over  the  face  of  the  earth,  about  the  few 
that  have  gills  and  thus  point  to  a  remote  origin 
of  the  burrowing  race  from  aquatic  forms.  We 
can  think  of  the  time  very  long  again  when  the 
pioneers  left  the  fresh  water  and  found  a  new  world 
underground,  how  for  long  they  probably  enjoyed 
ages  of  peace,  how,  first,  centipedes  and  long  after- 
ward moles  disturbed  their  solitudes.  In  a  rather 
different  sense  than  was  originally  meant  may  we 
not  say  of  the  worm,  "Thou  art  my  brother"  ? 

We  have  given  three  homely  illustrations,  but  the 
[point  is,  that  everything  is  an  illustration. )  Every- 
thing is  equally  wonderful  if  we  know  enough 
about  it.  It  is  true  that  we  suffer  from  the  limi- 
tations of  our  senses  and  of  our  sympathies,  as 
well  as  of  our  knowledge;  he  who  reads  the  rocks 
may  never  have  seen  the  stars,  and  the  coleop- 
terist  whose  heart  is  in  the  right  place  as  regards 
the  beetle-world  may  never  have  heard  the 
throstle  sing.  This  is  one  of  the  defects  of  the 
quality  we  are  discussing,  we  become  preoccupied 
with  one  kind  of  wonder,  but  it  is  infinitely  better 
than  not  having  the  quality  at  all.  What  we  are 
driving  at  is,  of  course,  what  every  nature-poet, 
from  the  Hebrew  psalmist  to  George  Meredith, 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  35 

has  felt,  and  perhaps  Walt  Whitman  most  keenly 
of  all — the  inextinguishable  wonder  of  the  world. 

"  I  believe  a  leaf  of  grass  is  no  less  than  the  journey-work 

of  the  stars, 
And  the  pismire  is  equally  perfect,  and  the  grain  of  sand, 

and  the  egg  of  the  wren, 

And  the  tree-toad  is  a  chef-d'ceuvre  for  the  highest, 
And  the  running  blackberry  would  adorn  the  parlours  of 

heaven, 
And  the  narrowest  hinge  in  my  hand  puts  to  scorn  all 

machinery, 
And  the  cow  crunching  with  depressed  head  surpasses 

any  statue, 
And  a  mouse  is  miracle  enough  to  stagger  sextillions  of 

infidels." 

This  is  high  doctrine,  and  who  shall  attain  unto 
it?  but  it  is  an  ideal  of  rational  emotion  worth 
striving  after.  There's  the  same  idea  more  briefly 
put  in  Meredith's  famous  lines : 

"You,  of  any  well  that  springs, 
May  unfold  the  heaven  of  things." 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  with  the  growth 
of  knowledge  the  precise  basis  of  wonder  may 
change.  Our  forefathers  wondered  at  the  light- 
ning, we  wonder  at  electricity;  the  child  wonders 
at  the  sunbeam  dancing  about  the  room,  we  won- 
der at  the  Rontgen  rays ;  the  simple  mind  wonders 
at  the  snowflakes,  we  wonder  at  the  results  of  the 
Great  Ice  Age. 


36  The  Bible  of  Nature 

But  the  moral  of  all  this  is  obvious.  The 
wonder  of  the  world  is  a  stimulus  to  our  scien- 
tific intelligence,  it  incites  us  to  discover  the  "open 
Sesame"  for  hundreds  of  Aladdin's  caves,  it  makes 
us  bow  in  reverence.  Moreover,  it  is  most  ob- 
viously something  to  enjoy,  to  delight  in  more  and 
more.  We  do  well  to  recall  that  line  of  Gold- 
smith's, "His  heaven  commences  ere  the  world  be 
past."  Do  we  not  need  some  infusion  of  the 
simple  delight  in  the  earth  which  was  expressed 
by  Matthew  Arnold  in  his  "  Empedocles  on  Etna," 
"  Is  it  so  small  a  thing  to  have  enjoy'd  the  sun  ?"  ? 

The  Sense  of  Wonder  and  the  Scientific  Mood. — Our 
second  general  reflection  is  on  the  relation  between 
science  and  wonder.  Is  not  wonder  the  offspring 
of  ignorance?  Is  not  science  the  sworn  foe  of 
mystery?  Do  not  all  wonders  disappear  in  the 
light  of  scientific  day? 

There  are  two  separate  questions  here,  first, 
whether  the  scientific  outlook,  which  inquires  into 
natural  causes,  is  in  itself  antagonistic  to  the  sense 
of  wonder;  and,  secondly,  whether  the  results  of 
scientific  analysis  have  not  explained  away  much 
that  used  to  be  wonderful  in  human  eyes. 

The  Three  Moods :  Practical,  Emotional,  and  Scien- 
tific.— We  must  admit,  of  course,  that  the  scien- 
tific mood  is  quite  different  from  the  emotional 
mood,  just  as  it  is  quite  different  from  the  practical 
mood.  The  practical  man  is  concerned  with 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  37 

possibilities  of  action,  in  obedience  to  Nature's 
primary  command,  "  Be  up  and  doing."  The  man 
of  feeling  is  not  concerned  with  loaves  and  fishes; 
he  "hitches  his  waggon  to  the  stars";  he  seeks  to 
"  live  on  even  terms  with  Time," 

"Whilst  upper  life  the  slender  rill 
Of  human  sense  doth  overfill." 

The  herbs  and  the  bees,  the  birds  and  the  beasts, 
send  tendrils  into  his  heart,  claiming  and  finding 
kinship.  In  a  hundred  different  ways  he  echoes 
Schiller's  words: 

"O  wunderschb'n  ist  Gottes  Erde, 
Und  schon  auf  ihr  ein  Mensch  zu  sein." 

The  scientific  mood,  on  the  other  hand,  has  for 
its  main  intention  to  describe  the  sequences  in 
nature  in  the  simplest  possible  formulae,  to  make 
a  thought-model  of  the  known  world.  The  sci- 
entific man  has  elected  primarily  to  know,  not  do. 
He  does  not  seek,  like  the  practical  man,  to  realize 
the  ideal  of  controlling  nature  and  life,  though  he 
makes  this  more  possible;  he  seeks  rather  to  ideal- 
ize— to  conceptualize — the  real,  or  at  least  those 
aspects  of  reality  which  are  available  in  his  ex- 
perience. He  would  make  the  world  translucent, 
not  that  emotion  may  catch  the  glimmer  of  the 
indefinable  light  that  shines  through,  but  for  other 
reasons — because  of  his  inborn  inquisitiveness, 


38  The  Bible  of  Nature 

because  of  his  dislike  of  obscurities,  because  of 
his  craving  for  a  system — an  intellectual  system  in 
which  phenomena  are  at  least  provisionally  unified. 

Now,  it  is  surely  best  to  say  that  the  three  dom- 
inant moods  of  man — practical,  emotional,  and 
scientific — which  correspond  metaphorically  to 
hand,  heart,  and  head,  are  all  equally  necessary 
and  worthy,  but  that  they  are  most  worthy  when 
they  respect  one  another  as  equally  justifiable  out- 
looks on  nature,  and  when  they  are  combined,  in 
some  measure  at  least,  in  a  full  human  life.  A 
thoroughly  sane  life  implies  a  recognition  of  the 
trinity  of  knowing,  feeling,  and  doing.  This 
spells  health,  wholeness,  holiness,  as  Edward 
Carpenter  has  said. 

One-sidedness,  whether  practical,  emotional,  or 
scientific,  implies  a  denial  of  the  trinity  of  know- 
ing, feeling;  and  doing,  a  violence  to  the  unity  of 
life.  When  any  one  of  the  moods  becomes  so 
dominant  that  the  validity  of  the  others  is  denied, 
the  results  are  likely  to  be  tainted  with  some  vice 
— some  inhumanity,  some  sentimentalism,  some 
pedantry. 

When  the  practical  mood  becomes  altogether 
dominant,  when  things  get  into  the  saddle  and 
override  ideas  and  ideals  and  all  good-feeling, 
when  the  multiplication  of  loaves  and  fishes  be- 
comes the  only  problem  of  the  world,  we  know 
the  results  to  be  vicious.  The  vices  of  the  hyper- 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  39 

trophied  practical  mood  are — belittlement,  base- 
ness, brutality.  To  be  wholly  practical  is  to  grub 
for  edible  roots  and  see  no  flowers  upon  the  earth, 
no  stars  overhead.  The  monstrous  practical  man 
"will  have  nothing  to  do  with  sentiment,"  though 
he  prides  himself  in  keeping  close  to  what  he  calls 
"the  facts";  he  cannot  abide  "theory,"  though  he 
is  himself  imbued  with  a  quaint  Martin  Tupper- 
ism  which  gives  a  false  simplicity  to  the  problems 
of  life;  he  will  live  in  what  he  calls  "the  real 
world,"  and  yet  he  often  hugs  close  to  himself  the 
most  unreal  of  ideals. 

Similarly,  the  hypertrophied  emotional  mood, 
unruled  and  uncorrelated,  uncurbed  by  science, 
unrelated  to  the  practical  problems  of  life,  tends  to 
become  morbid,  mawkish,  mad.  What  we  have 
called  rational  wonder  may  degenerate  into  "a 
caterwauling  about  Nature."  There  may  be 
overfeeling,  just  as  there  may  be  overdoing.  The 
disastrous  results  of  feeling  without  knowledge, 
of  sympathy  without  synthesis  (in  the  language 
of  the  learned),  of  effervescence  without  activity, 
are  familiar  enough  in  our  own  day. 

Similarly  (must  we  not  confess?)  the  hyper- 
trophied scientific  mood  has  its  vices — of  over- 
knowing,  of  ranking  science  first,  and  life  second 
(as  if  science  were  not,  after  all,  for  the  evolution 
of  life),  of  ignoring  good-feeling  (as  if  knowledge 
could  not  be  bought  at  too  high  a  price),  of  pe- 


40  The  Bible  of  Nature 

dantry  (as  if  science  were  merely  a  "preserve"  for 
expert  intellectual  sportsmen,  and  not  also  an  edu- 
cation for  the  citizen),  of  maniacal  muck-raking 
for  items  of  fact  (as  if  facts  alone  constituted  a 
science).  Yet  it  is,  like  the  other  moods,  a  natural 
and  necessary  expression  of  the  developing  human 
spirit,  and  affords  the  foundation  without  which 
practice  is  empirical  and  soon  helpless,  without 
which  emotion  becomes  sickly  and  superstitious. 

We  have  recalled  this  doctrine  of  the  three 
moods  because  it  seems  to  place  in  proper  per- 
spective the  question  whether  the  scientific  out- 
look is  not  prejudicial  to  the  sense  of  wonder. 
The  answer,  of  course,  is  that  while  we  cannot  have 
too  much  science,  it  is  for  ordinary  men  and 
women  unwholesome  to  keep  continually  looking 
out  at  one  window,  and  to  keep  the  shutters  on  the 
others.  Even  for  its  own  sake,  science  requires  to 
be  continually  moralized  and  socialized,  oriented, 
that  is  to  say,  in  relation  to  other  ideals  of  human 
life  than  its  own  immediate  one  of  making  a 
thought-model  of  the  cosmos.  Our  science  re- 
quires to  be  kept  in  touch  at  once  with  our  life  and 
with  our  dreams;  with  our  doing  and  with  our 
feeling;  with  our  practice  and  with  our  poetry. 
Synergy  and  sympathy  are  needed  to  complete  a 
practical  synthesis. 

Thus,  we  sympathize  with  the  emotional  or  ar- 
tistic recoil  from  science,  because  it  is  so  often  dis- 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  41 

proportionately  analytic.  Science,  like  a  child 
pulling  a  flower  to  bits,  is  apt  to  dissect  more  than 
it  reconstructs,  and  to  lose  in  its  analysis  the  vision 
of  unity  and  harmony  which  the  artist  has  ever 
before  his  eyes.  But  if  the  artist  has  patience,  he 
will  often  find  that  science  restores  the  unity  with 
more  meaning  in  it  than  before. 

Thus,  too,  we  sympathize  with  the  recoil  from 
"a  botany  which  teaches  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  flower,"  from  "a  biology  which  is  all 
necrology."  But  have  patience  and  you  will  find 
that  the  botanist  brings  the  Dryad  back  into  the 
tree,  and  that  the  necrologist  makes  the  dry  bones 
live. 

We  know  how  Wordsworth  recoiled  from  irrel- 
evant irreverent  science.  He  spoke  of 

"One,  all  eyes 

Philosopher  \  a  fingering  slave, 
One  that  would  peep  and  botanise 
Upon  his  mother's  grave." 

Yet  in  the  preface  to  "This  Lawn  a  Carpet  all 
Alive,"  Wordsworth  wrote:  "Some  are  of  the 
opinion  that  the  habit  of  analysing,  decomposing, 
and  anatomising  is  inevitably  unfavourable  to  the 
perception  of  beauty."  But  "The  beauty  in  form 
of  a  plant  or  an  animal  is  not  made  less,  but  more, 
apparent  as  a  whole  by  more  accurate  insight  into 
its  constituent  properties  and  powers." 


42  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Our  point  just  now,  however,  is  rather  different. 
It  is  simply  that  for  ordinary  men  and  women  one 
of  the  conditions  of  sanity  is  an  alternation  of 
moods.  Darwin  was  no  ordinary  man,  yet  he 
once  admitted  that  it  was  a  rest  to  lie  under  the 
trees  and  listen  to  the  birds  without  bothering  his 
head  about  how  they  came  to  be  thus  or  thus.  The 
great  embryologist  Von  Baer  once  shut  himself  up 
in  his  study  when  snow  was  upon  the  ground,  and 
did  not  come  out  again  until  the  rye  was  in  har- 
vest. He  was  filled,  he  tells  us,  with  uncontroll- 
able pathos  at  the  sight.  "The  laws  of  develop- 
ment may  be  discovered  this  year  or  many  years 
hence — by  me  or  by  others — what  matters  it  ?  It 
is  surely  folly  to  sacrifice  for  this  the  joy  of  life 
which  nothing  can  replace."  Life  is  not  for  science, 
but  science  for  life.  In  short,  it  comes  to  this,  that 
there  is  a  time  for  science,  and  a  time  for  emotion. 
It  is  a  part  of  man's  chief  end  not  only  to  know 
nature,  but  to  enjoy  her  forever. 

The  Sense  of  Wonder  and  the  Results  of  Science. — 
Turning  now  to  the  second  part  of  the  question, 
we  have  to  ask  whether  the  results  of  science  do  not 
explain  away  the  wonderful.  Take  the  rainbow, 
for  instance.  It  made  Wordsworth's  heart  leap 
up;  when  he  was  a  child,  when  he  was  a  man. 


"So  be  it  when  I  shall  grow  old, 
Or  let  me  die." 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  43 

But  does  the  modern  school-boy's  heart  leap  up  ? 
His  Physiology  lessons  have  taught  him  to  regard 
with  extreme  disfavour  any  such  interference  with 
the  normal  function  of  the  vagus  nerve;  and,  be- 
sides, his  Physics  lessons  have  explained  away  the 
rainbow.  One  remembers  how  Keats  in  his  wrath 
cursed  Newton  for  his  share  in  robbing  mankind 
of  the  wonder  of  the  rainbow.  What  can  one  say 
except  this,  that  the  beauty  of  the  rainbow  is  the 
same  to-day  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  Noah,  and 
that  if  we  follow  up  the  scientific  interpretation 
of  the  rainbow,  we  come  in  sight  of  even  greater 
wonders.  When  the  half-gods  go,  the  Gods  ar- 
rive. 

We  watch  the  midnight  sky  flushed  with  the 
quivering  Northern  Lights — pale  green  and  rose, 
crimson  and  gold — pulsating  like  the  pinions  of  a 
hovering  bird,  and  we  wonder.  We  are  at  first 
saddened  by  our  friend's  remark  that  it  is  an  inter- 
esting electro-magnetic  phenomenon.  But  when 
we  ask  for  details,  and  he  tells  us  that  corpuscles 
projected  from  the  sun  and  bombarding  the  earth 
are  affected  by  terrestrial  magnetism,  and  travel 
in  spiral  coils  toward  the  poles,  till  at  a  certain 
distance  they  exhaust  themselves  in  giving  off 
cathode  rays,  and  so  on,  we  begin  to  feel  that  we 
did  not  well  to  be  sad.  As  we  follow  up  the  sci- 
entific unravelling  of  the  mystery  of  the  Aurora 
Borealis,  we  find  that  the  world  is  even  grander 


44  The  Bible  of  Nature 

than  we  knew,  and  we  enjoy  the  Northern  Lights 
better  next  time. 

We  ascend  the  hill  among  the  woods  on  an 
autumn  afternoon,  and  we  look  down  on  a  sea  of 
gold  mingled  with  fire — all  the  glory  of  the  with- 
ering leaves.  Our  botanical  friend  tells  us  of  the 
breaking  up  of  the  green  grains  into  chlorophyll 
and  xanthophyll,  how  the  latter  is  affected  by  the 
acidity  of  the  cell-sap,  how  a  special  death-pig- 
ment, anthocyanin,  may  make  its  appearance,  and 
so  on;  all  the  glory  seems  at  first  to  fade  into  chem- 
istry. But  if  we  question  the  botanist  a  little  we 
find  that  he  has  given  us  more  than  we  have  lost. 
We  see  that  the  hard-worked  leaves  must  die,  that 
it  is  better  for  the  tree  that  they  should  fall,  that 
they  first  surrender  everything  that  they  have  that 
is  worth  having,  till  little  more  than  skeleton  and 
waste  is  left,  that  they  are  transfigured  in  dying, 
becoming  for  a  brief  space  almost  floral,  and  that 
their  brilliance  is  a  literal  beauty  for  ashes. 

Science  is  always  trying  to  show  us  the  wheels 
that  go  round,  the  wheels  within  wheels,  and 
though  the  movement  of  the  hands  of  the  world- 
clock  is  not  so  mysterious  as  it  used  to  be  in  the 
days  of  our  childhood  and  in  the  days  of  our  fath- 
ers, it  is  certainly  more,  not  less,  wonderful.  Even 
when  we  are  shown  that  the  clock  we  know  sprang 
from  a  simpler  clock  and  that  from  a  simpler  still, 
the  wonder  deepens.  If  we  ask  Science  to  tell  us 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  45 

of  the  great  clock-maker,  she  will  be  quite  silent, 
for  no  man  by  searching  can  find  out  God,  but  if 
we  ask  how  it  precisely  is  that  the  main-springs 
work,  or  why  it  exactly  is  that  the  weights  go  down, 
Science  will  answer  that  she  does  not  know.  If  we 
ask  Science  to  tell  us  why  there  is  a  world-clock 
or  a  successor  of  world-clocks,  at  all,  she  will  again 
be  quite  silent,  for  Science  takes  no  stock  in  pur- 
poses; but  if  we  ask  how  the  first  clock,  from 
which  all  the  other  clocks  are  descended,  came 
into  being,  Science  will  answer  that  she  does  not 
know. 

This,  then,  is  the  real  reason  why  the  results  of 
science  cannot  kill  wonder,  but  should  always  in- 
crease it.  Minor  mysteries  disappear,  but  greater 
mysteries  stand  confessed.  Science  never  seeks 
to  give  ultimate  explanations  of  phenomena,  it  de- 
scribes their  appearance  in  space  and  their  se- 
quence in  time.  The  man  of  scientific  mood  be- 
comes aware  of  certain  fractions  of  reality  that 
interest  him;  he  tries  to  become  intimately  aware 
of  these,  to  make  his  sensory  experience  of  them 
as  full  as  possible;  he  seeks  to  arrange  them  in 
ordered  series,  to  detect  their  interrelations  and 
likeness  of  sequence;  he  tries  to  reduce  them  to 
simpler  terms  or  to  find  their  common  denomi- 
nator; and  finally ,  he  endeavours  to  sum  them  up  in 
a  general  formula,  often  called  "a  law  of  nature." 

Let  us  take  a  concrete  case.     "The  law  of  gravi- 


46  The  Bible  of  Nature 

tation  is  a  brief  description  of  how  every  particle 
of  matter  in  the  universe  is  altering  its  motion  with 
reference  to  every  other  particle.  It  does  not  tell 
us  why  particles  thus  move;  it  does  not  tell  us  why 
the  earth  describes  a  certain  curve  round  the  sun. 
It  simply  resumes,  in  a  few  brief  words,  the  rela- 
tionships observed  between  a  vast  series  of  phe- 
nomena. It  economizes  thought  by  stating  in 
conceptual  shorthand  that  routine  of  our  percep- 
tions which  forms  for  us  the  universe  of  gravita- 
ting matter."1 

Conclusion. — We  cannot  do  better  than  sum  up 
by  quoting  Kant's  famous  passage: 

"The  world  around  us  opens  before  our  view  so  mag- 
nificent a  spectacle  of  order,  variety,  beauty,  and  con- 
formity to  ends  that,  whether  we  pursue  our  observations 
into  the  infinity  of  space  in  the  one  direction,  or  into  its 
illimitable  divisions  on  the  other,  whether  we  regard  the 
world  in  its  greatest  or  in  its  least  manifestations — even 
after  we  have  attained  to  the  highest  summit  of  knowledge 
which  our  weak  minds  can  reach — we  find  that  language 
in  presence  of  wonders  so  inconceivable  has  lost  its  force, 
and  number  its  power  to  reckon,  nay,  even  thought  fails 
to  conceive  adequately,  and  our  conception  of  the  whole 
dissolves  into  an  astonishment  without  the  power  of  ex- 
pression— all  the  more  eloquent  that  it  is  dumb. 

"Everywhere  around  us  we  observe  a  chain  of  causes 
and  effects,  of  means  and  ends,  of  death  and  birth;  and 

iKarl  Pearson,  "The  Grammar  of  Science,"  revised 
edition,  1900,  p.  99. 


The  Wonder  of  the  World  47 

as  nothing  has  entered  of  itself  into  the  condition  in  which 
we  find  it,  we  are  constantly  referred  to  some  other  thing, 
which  itself  suggests  the  same  inquiry  regarding  its  cause, 
and  thus  the  universe  must  sink  into  the  abyss  of  nothing- 
ness, unless  we  admit  that,  besides  this  infinite  chain  of 
contingencies,  there  exists  something  that  is  primal  and 
self-subsistent,  something  which  as  the  cause  of  this  phe- 
nomenal world  secures  its  continuance  and  preservation." 

To  speak  of  the  primal  and  self-subsistent  does 
not  come  within  the  strictly  scientific  universe  of 
discourse,  but  to  disclose  the  wonder  of  the  world 
does.  And  it  may  be  that  those  who  realize  this 
wonder  most  are  those  who  follow  it  farthest  and 
most  fearlessly  as  it  beckons,  assured  more  and 
more  fully  of  what  is  meant  by  Pascal's  words, 
"In  that  thou  hast  sought  me,  thou  hast  already 
found  me." 

Do  you  ask  why  we  have  delayed  so  long  over 
what  every  one  admits — the  wonder  of  the  world  ? 
It  is  because  this  wonder  is  Nature's  primary 
message  to  us,  because  the  sense  of  wonder  is  at 
the  roots  of  science  and  philosophy,  because  it 
has  been  and  will  always  be  one  of  the  footstools 
of  religion.  We  do  well  to  mistrust  any  form  of 
any  one  of  these — science,  philosophy,  or  religion 
— which  does  not  deepen  and  heighten  that  won- 
der which  is  a  primary  attribute  of  every  one  who 
will  be  a  minister  and  interpreter  of  nature.  In 
all  simplicity  we  must  begin,  though  we  need  not 


48  The  Bible  of  Nature 

end  with  the  quality  alluded  to  in  Emerson's 
child's-poem — "  Excelsior." 

"  Over  his  head  were  the  maple  buds, 
And  over  the  tree  was  the  moon, 
And  over  the  moon  were  the  starry  studs 
That  drop  from  the  angels'  shoon." 


II 

THE  HISTORY  OF  THINGS 


n 

THE  HISTORY  OF  THINGS 

The  Antiquity  of  Things. — One  of  the  most  ob- 
vious results  of  the  study  of  nature  is  simply  the 
conviction  that  everything  has  a  long  history  be- 
hind it.  "Everything,"  as  Bagehot  said,  "has 
become  an  antiquity."  The  human  race  seems 
to  be  several  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  old, 
and  yet  man  is  a  creature  of  yesterday  compared 
with  many  of  his  present  companions  upon  the 
earth.  How  long  it  is  since  the  earth  became  fit 
to  be  the  cradle  and  home  of  life  we  do  not  know, 
but  it  must  be  reckoned  in  millions  of  years. 
One  enthusiastic  calculator  has  stated,  with  al- 
most painful  precision,  that  the  earth  is  861,000,- 
000  years  old. 

Things  Change  with  the  Times. — But  it  is  not  mere- 
ly the  length  of  years  that  impresses  us;  it  is  that 
everything — or  rather  the  aspect  of  everything — 
has  changed  with  the  times.  The  present  is  in  a 
sense  a  child  of  the  past,  but  it  is  different  from  its 
parent.  The  earth  has  passed  from  phase  to 
phase;  one  climate  has  succeeded  another;  there 
has  been  a  procession  of  faunas  and  floras  over 
the  stage;  we  look  back  upon  a  great  drama. 
51 


52  The  Bible  of  Nature 

"There  rolls  the  deep  where  grew  the  tree; 
O  Earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen! 
There,  where  the  long  street  roars,  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea. 

"The  hills  are  shadows,  and  they  flow 
From  form  to  form,  and  nothing  stands; 
They  melt  like  mist,  the  solid  lands 
Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go." 

— "In  Memariam,"  CXXII. 

Making  of  the  Earth. — The  story  of  the  earth  is  a 
long  story,  retold  every  year  in  our  schools  and 
colleges,  always  becoming  clearer  and  more  pict- 
uresque as  investigation  continues.  All  that  we 
require  to  do  for  our  present  purpose  is  to  open  the 
book  here  and  there>  to  revive  our  impressions 
of  the  sweep  of  events. 

In  the  book  of  the  genesis  of  things  there  are 
no  pages  grander  than  those  that  deal — still  some- 
what vaguely — with  the  making  of  our  solar  sys- 
tem. The  Nebular  Hypothesis,  which  we  owe 
to  the  genius  of  Kant  and  Laplace,  is  one  of  the 
boldest  and  most  inspiring  of  all  the  scientific 
guesses  at  truth,  and  with  sundry  emendations 
and  saving  clauses  this  Nebular  Hypothesis  is 
adhered  to  by  most  modern  investigators. 

"This  world  was  once  a  fluid  haze  of  light, 
Till  toward  the  centre  set  the  starry  tides 
And  eddied  into  suns,  that  wheeling,  cast 
The  planets."          —Tennyson's "Princess." 


The  History  of  Things  53 

"The  history  of  a  star,"  Professor  R.  K.  Dun- 
can writes,  "begins  with  a  nebula.  A  nebula 
is  a  vast  swarm  of  meteorites  colliding  together. 
The  meteorites  are  cold  lumps  of  matter  contain- 
ing the  chemical  elements  as  we  know  them  on 
earth.  These  meteorites  in  accordance  with  their 
gravitational  attraction  seek  the  centrje  of  the 
swarm,  collisions  result,  heat  is  evolved,  and  the 
temperature  gradually  rises." 

Owing  to  the  meteoric  bombardment,  the  con- 
densing and  colliding  mass  becomes  converted 
into  incandescent  gas,  probably  much  simpler 
chemically  than  the  original  swarm.  As  the  bom- 
bardment of  meteorites  ceases,  the  gaseous  star 
begins  to  cool.  Chemically,  it  retraces  its  steps, 
becoming  more  complex  and  heterogeneous  again. 
It  passes  through  the  condition  now  illustrated 
by  our  sun  or  by  Arcturus,  and  may  eventually 
become  in  itself  extinct,  like  "yon  dead  world, 
the  moon." 

One  of  the  most  attractive  forms  of  the  Nebular 
Hypothesis  is  that  suggested  by  Professor  Cham- 
berlin.  Laplace  started  with  a  gaseous  nebula, 
Lockyer  and  G.  H.  Darwin  start  with  a  swarm  of 
meteorites,  Chamberlin  starts  with  innumerable 
small  bodies  (planetesimals)  revolving  about  a 
central  gaseous  mass.  The  central  mass  became 
the  sun;  knots  or  partial  concentrations  in  the 
nebula  became  the  nuclei  of  the  planets;  the  res- 


54  The  Bible  of  Nature 

idue  of  diffuse  nebulous  matter  is  added  to  the 
sun  or  to  the  planets.  The  prominent  features 
of  this  theory  are  (1)  that  it  starts  from  a  parent 
nebula  of  a  spiral  type,  like  most  of  those  now 
existing;  (2)  that  it  supposes  this  nebula  to  con- 
sist of  small  bodies,  like  infinitesimally  small 
planets;  and  (3)  that  it  does  not  suppose  any 
fundamental  change  in  the  dynamics  of  the  system 
after  the  nebula  was  once  formed. 

Even  to-day  the  work  of  creation  continues,  for 
stars  are  being  born  out  of  the  fire-mist;  even  to- 
night it  may  be  that  a  new  star  will  be  seen  taking 
her  place  as  a  debutante  in  the  splendid  cosmic 
assembly.  Some  stars  are  growing  cooler  and 
more  complex,  recapitulating  the  history  of  our 
own  earth;  others  seem  to  be  growing  hotter  and 
less  complex,  perhaps  suggesting  what  may  hap- 
pen here  also  in  days  to  come. 

Stages  in  the  History. — The  earth,  then,  probably 
had  its  beginning  as  one  of  the  rings  swirled  off 
from  a  great  nebular  mass,  the  centre  of  which 
gradually  condensed  into  our  sun.  It  was  once 
a  rapidly  rotating  molten  planet — one  of  many, 
for  it  may  be  noted  that  over  five  hundred  planets 
— large  and  small — are  now  known,  though  Hegel 
tried  to  prove  that  there  could  not  be  more  than 
seven.  It  probably  had  a  deep  atmosphere,  part 
of  which  afterward  condensed  into  the  waters 
that  cover  the  earth.  Its  molten  ocean  was  pro- 


The  History  of  Things  55 

foundly  disturbed  by  solar  tides,  and  it  was  per- 
haps a  particularly  high  tide  which  made  the  earth 
give  birth  to  the  moon.  This  marked  the  first 
critical  period  in  the  history  of  our  planet.  "At 
the  eventful  time  of  parturition  the  earth  was  ro- 
tating, with  a  period  of  from  two  to  four  hours, 
about  an  axis  inclined  at  some  11°  or  12°  to  the 
ecliptic.  The  time  which  has  elapsed  since  the 
moon  occupied  a  position  nine  terrestrial  radii 
distant  from  the  earth  is  at  least  fifty-six  to  fifty- 
seven  millions  of  years,  but  may  have  been  much 
more."  1 

The  moon  thus  arose  as  a  sort  of  moult  of  the 
outer  envelope  of  the  hot  earth.  It  was  charged 
with  steam  and  other  gases  under  a  pressure  of 
5,000  pounds  to  the  square  inch,  but  as  it  receded 
from  the  earth  and  the  pressure  continuously  dimin- 
ished it  became  "as  explosive  as  a  charged  bomb, 
and  steam  burst  forth  from  numberless  volcanoes." 
The  moon,  in  short,  was  only  born  to  die.  "  While 
the  face  of  the  moon  might  thus  have  acquired  its 
existing  features,  the  ejected  material  might  possi- 
bly have  been  shot  so  far  away  from  its  origin  as  to 
have  acquired  an  independent  orbit"2  and  some 
of  the  meteorites  which  now  descend  upon  the 
earth  may  be  returned  portions  of  the  early 

1  Prof.  W.  J.  Sollas,  Presidential  Address,  Section  C,  Brit- 
ish Association,  1900.     "Nature,"  September  13,  p.  482. 
'Prof.  W.  J.  Sollas,  loc.  cit. 


56  The  Bible  of  Nature 

envelope,  the  bulk  of  which  gave  rise  to  the 
moon. 

Soon  after  the  birth  of  the  moon  the  earth  be- 
came consolidated  (with  a  surface  temperature  of 
about  1170°  C.)  and  the  moon  may  have  been  in- 
fluential in  determining  high-pressure  areas  and 
low-pressure  areas  over  the  surface  of  the  crust, 
which  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  prim- 
itive depressions  and  .elevations.  This,  as  Pro- 
fessor Sollas  says,  was  the  second  critical  period 
in  the  history  of  the  earth,  the  stage  of  the  "con- 
sistentior  status."  It  may  have  been  forty  mil- 
lions of  years  ago,  or  much  more. 

When,  with  continued  cooling,  the  temperature 
of  the  surface  fell  to  370°  C.,  the  steam  in  the  at- 
mosphere would  begin  to  liquefy,  and  this  was 
the  first  step  in  the  origin  of  the  oceans.  The  hot 
waters  began  to  be  localized  in  primitive  faint  de- 
pressions, and,  acting  energetically  on  the  silicates 
of  the  primitive  crust,  began  to  be  salt.  In  a  man- 
ner difficult  to  understand  a  distinction  was  es- 
tablished between  ocean  basins  and  continental 
areas. 

Through  stages  more  or  less  like  those  hinted 
at  above  the  earth  has  reached  its  present  state. 
The  vast  nucleus  or  "  centrosphere "  seems  to  be 
practically  solid,  the  melting  point  of  the  metals 
and  metalloids  being  raised  by  the  immense 
pressure.  Outside  the  central  mass  there  is  "a 


The  History  of  Things  57 

shell  of  materials  bordering  upon  fusion,"  which 
Sir  John  Murray  calls  the  "tektosphere."  On 
this  plastic  shell  there  rests  the  heterogeneous  and 
wrinkled  crust  or  lithosphere,  always  slightly 
pulsating. 

Then  followed  what  may  be  called  the  wrinkling 
and  folding  of  the  earth's  crust.  If  the  solid  core 
slowly  contracted,  the  primitive  crust  in  accommo- 
dating itself — through  changes  in  the  plastic  shell 
or  tektosphere — to  the  shrinkage  within,  would  be 
buckled,  warped,  and  thrown  into  ridges.  "The 
contraction  of  the  interior  of  the  earth,  consequent 
on  its  loss  of  heat,  causes  the  crust  to  fall  upon  it 
in  folds,  which  rise  over  the  continents  and  sink 
under  the  oceans,  and  the  flexure  of  the  area  of 
sedimentation  is  partly  a  consequence  of  this  fold- 
ing, partly  of  overloading." l  The  continents  may 
be  due  to  contractions  of  the  whole  crust,  while 
mountains  may  be  due  to  foldings  of  the  outer 
layers  through  tangential  stress  brought  about  by 
contractions  of  the  deepest  layers.2  Here  we  have 
to  do  with  local  collapses  or  dislocations  of  the 
crust  and  there  with  great  lateral  thrusts.  As  in 
pack  ice,  there  may  have  been  unyielding  masses, 
which  had  to  be  piled  one  upon  the  other,  while 
other  masses  may  have  been  simply  overlapped. 

1  Sollas,  loc.  cit. 

2  See  the  epoch-making  work  of  Suess:     "Der  Antlitz  der 
Erde"  (1897). 


58  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Not  less  momentous  were  the  great  transgressions 
and  regressions  of  the  seas. 

Sculpturing  of  Scenery. — Finally,  we  pass  to  a 
chapter  in  the  earth's  history  which  we  can  read 
with  less  uncertainty — the  more  detailed  sculptur- 
ing and  the  making  of  scenery.  There  have  been 
violent  blows,  such  as  earthquakes  and  volcanic 
eruptions;  there  have  been  drastic  changes  of 
climate,  such  as  the  Great  Ice  Age;  but  most  of 
the  factors  which  have  wrought  out  the  details  of 
earth-sculpture  seem  to  have  been  very  gentle 
chisellings.  The  solid  earth  is  weathered  away 
by  air  and  rain,  by  frost  and  snow;  the  waters  wear 
the  stones;  the  mountain  is  transplanted  piece- 
meal to  the  sea;  there  is  a  ceaseless  wear  and  tear 
of  continents;  there  is  a  slow  deposition  of  the 
soluble  and  insoluble  results  of  denudation.  As 
James  Hutton  said  in  his  "Theory  of  the  Earth" 
(1788),  "little  causes,  long  continuing,"  have 
wrought  great  changes. 

The  Hand  of  Life  upon  the  Earth. — Nor  can  we 
overlook  the  influence  of  the  hand  of  life  upon  the 
earth.  The  sea-weeds  cling  around  the  shore  and 
lessen  the  shock  of  the  breakers.  The  lichens  eat 
slowly  into  the  stones,  sending  their  fine  threads 
beneath  the  surface  as  thickly  sometimes  "as 
grass-roots  in  a  meadow-land,"  so  that  the  skin 
of  the  rock  is  gradually  weathered  away.  On 
the  moor  the  mosses  form  huge  sponges,  which 


The  History  of  Things  59 

mitigate  floods,  and  keep  the  springs  welling  and 
the  streams  flowing  in  days  of  drought.  Many 
little  plants  smooth  away  the  wrinkles  on  the 
earth's — their  mother's — face,  and  adorn  her  with 
jewels.  Others  have  caught  and  stored  the  sun- 
shine, hidden  its  power  in  strange  guise  in  the 
earth,  and  our  hearths  with  their  smouldering 
peat  or  glowing  coal  are  warmed  by  the  sunlight 
of  the  summers  of  thousands  or  millions  of  years 
ago.  The  grass,  which  began  to  grow  in  com- 
paratively modern  (i.  e.,  Tertiary)  times,  has  made 
the  earth  a  fit  home  for  flocks  and  herds,  and  pro- 
tects it  like  a  garment;  the  forests  affect  the  rain- 
fall and  temper  the  climate,  besides  sheltering 
multitudes  of  living  things,  to  many  of  whom 
every  blow  of  the  axe  is  a  death-knell.  In  fact, 
no  plant,  from  bacterium  to  oak-tree,  either  lives 
or  dies  to  itself,  or  is  without  its  influence,  direct 
or  indirect,  upon  the  earth.  In  arguing  from  the 
present  rates  of  earth-weathering  to  those  in  past 
ages,  geologists  have  not  perhaps  taken  sufficient 
account  of  the  degree  in  which  the  hand  of  life, 
especially  in  more  modern  times,  has  modified  the 
extra-animate  cosmic  operations. 

Similarly,  as  regards  animals,  the  influence  of 
the  hand  upon  life  upon  the  earth  is  manifold. 
On  the  one  hand  we  see  destructive  agencies — 
the  boring  sponges  and  worms  reduce  the  shells 
to  sand,  the  Pholads  and  other  larger  borers  help  to 


60  The  Bible  of  Nature 

break  down  the  most  solid  seashore  rocks,  the 
crayfish  and  their  enemies,  the  water-voles,  unite 
to  make  the  river-banks  collapse,  the  beavers  have 
changed  the  aspect  of  large  tracts  of  country,  and 
so  on  through  a  long  list. 

On  the  other  hand  we  see  conservative  agen- 
cies— the  accumulation  of  enormous  quantities 
of  calcareous  and  siliceous  ooze  in  the  great 
abysses  of  the  oceans,  the  formation  of  great  shell- 
beds,  the  building  of  coral-reefs.  We  have  al- 
ready spoken  of  the  work  of  earthworms,  and  when 
we  add  to  that  all  that  is  done  by  hundreds  of  other 
subterranean  creatures — from  burial  beetles  to 
moles — and  all  that  is  effected  by  the  microbes  of 
the  soil,  we  see  a  new  meaning  in  the  phrase  "the 
living  earth." 

To  sum  up, 

"They  say  the  solid  earth  whereon  we  tread 
In  tracks  of  fluent  heat  began, 
And  grew  to  seeming  random  forms, 
The  seeming  prey  of  cyclic  storms, 
Till  at  the  last  arose  the  man." 

This  in  more  precise  language  the  astronomers  and 
geologists  tell  us,  that  the  earth  took  form  from  a 
whirling  crowd  of  meteorites;  that  after  a  stage  of 
intense  heat  it  began  to  cool  and  consolidate;  that 
it  got  its  centrosphere,  its  tektosphere,  its  litho- 
sphere,  its  hydrosphere,  its  atmosphere;  that  as  it 


The  History  of  Things  61 

aged  its  skin  became  wrinkled — each  wrinkle 
marking  an  event  in  its  life  as  those  on  our  faces 
often  do;  that  it  was  exquisitely  sculptured  by 
fire  and  frost,  by  wind  and  rain,  by  river  and  sea; 
that  it  became  fit  to  be  a  cradle  and  home  of  living 
creatures;  that  the  hand  of  life  has  been  working 
upon  it  for  untold  ages,  forming  chalk  cliffs  and 
coral  reefs  and  coal  beds;  and  that,  finally,  man 
has  changed  the  face  of  continents — often  reckless 
of  results  and  ruthless  of  beauty. 

There  are  obvious  disadvantages  in  trying  to 
outline  in  a  few  minutes  the  history  of  a  hundred 
million  years  or  more.  The  outline  can  have 
none  of  the  picturesqueness  of  detail  which  gives 
charm  and  vividness  to  a  well-told  story.  A  brief 
outline  is  apt  to  suggest  that  everything  has  been 
cleared  up,  which  is  very  far  from  being  the  case. 
Some  chapters  are  extremely  obscure  and  there 
are  great  difficulties  in  every  chapter.  Every  year, 
however,  the  geologists  are  learning  to  read  the 
history  book  better,  and  we  have  given  the  sketch 
as  an  essential  part  of  our  argument.  It  is  an  in- 
stance of  the  slow  working  of  the  cosmic  mechan- 
ism towards  a  result  which  is  wonderful.  We  can 
discuss  it  without  any  complications  in  regard  to 
vitalism  or  psychism.  The  keynote  of  geological 
history-reading  may  be  found  in  Button's  famous 
sentence:  "No  powers  are  to  be  employed  that  are 
not  natural  to  the  globe,  no  action  to  be  admitted 


62  The  Bible  of  Nature 

except  those  of  which  the  principle  was  known, 
and  no  extraordinary  events  to  be  alleged  to  ex- 
plain a  common  appearance." 

Age  of  the  Earth. — Before  we  consider  the  precise 
nature  of  the  scientific  interpretation  of  the  past, 
let  us  pause  for  a  moment  to  look  back  on  the 
history  objectively.  We  are  impressed  by  the  an- 
tiquity of  it  all.  It  is  well  known  that  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  later,  there  was, 
even  among  geologists,  a  widespread  belief  that 
the  habitable  earth  was  some  6,000  years  old — 
a  belief  arrived  at  by  a  peculiar  wresting  of  the 
Scriptures.  But  when  James  Hutton  began  to 
see  "the  ruins  of  an  older  world  in  the  present 
structure  of  the  globe,"  when  William  Smith  be- 
gan to  disclose  the  succession  of  strata  and  to  tell 
the  tale  of  age  before  age  stretching  back  into  a 
distant  past,  when  Cuvier  and  others  began  to 
outline  a  succession  of  faunas  and  floras  leading 
us  back  and  back  to  the  mist  of  life's  beginnings, 
there  was  a  reaction  to  an  opposite  extreme,  and 
many  began  to  think  of  the  earth  as  a  sort  of  in- 
animate Methuselah,  "without  beginning  of  days 
or  end  of  years." 

Slowly,  attempts  at  measurement  began.  The 
geologists  tried  to  measure  the  thickness  of  strati- 
fied rocks,  sometimes  estimated  at  100,000,  some- 
times at  265,000  feet;  they  divided  this  by  the  ob- 
served rate  of  denudation  and  deposition  (a  foot 


The  History  of  Things  63 

in  a  century  or  a  foot  in  ten  centuries),  and  the 
answer  varied  from  twenty-six  millions  to  six 
hundred  and  eighty  millions  of  years.  They  tried 
other  methods,  such  as  computing  the  time  re- 
quired by  the  sea  to  become  as  salt  as  it  is,  and 
they  reached  other  results.  The  biologists  also 
had  their  ringer  in  the  pie,  and  made  a  modest  de- 
mand for  a  slice  of  time  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  evolution  of  living  creatures,  which  some  sup- 
posed would  require  a  hundred  million  years,  and 
others  more,  and  others  less.  In  short,  both  ge- 
ologists and  biologists  drew  without  stint  upon  the 
bank  of  time,  until  the  physicists  reminded  them 
that  their  credit  was  not  quite  unlimited.  Argu- 
ing from  the  rate  of  cooling  of  the  earth  and  sun 
and  other  insecure  data,  the  physicists,  notably 
Professor  Tait  and  Lord  Kelvin,  refused  to  allow 
more  than  ten  to  twenty  millions  of  years.  Under 
pressure,  the  grant  was  afterwards  increased  to 
forty  or  even  a  hundred  millions,  which  showed 
how  flexible  the  calculations  were.  Within  the 
last  few  years,  however,  since  the  discovery  of 
radio-activity,  since  it  became  known  that  the 
earth  is  not  self-cooling,  but  self-heating,  the 
physicists  have  become  willing  to  grant  the  ge- 
ologists and  biologists  as  much  time  as  they  want, 
say  a  thousand  million  years!  All  this  uncer- 
tainty has  been  mainly  due  to  the  insecure  data, 
which  no  amount  of  sound  mathematics  and  ac- 


64  The  Bible  of  Nature 

curate  arithmetic  can  make  up  for.  The  fact  is 
that  the  age  of  the  earth  is  an  unsolved  problem, 
but  it  must  amount  to  many  millions  of  years. 
We  have  dwelt  upon  this  because  in  our  concep- 
tion of  nature  must  be  included  the  datum  that 
the  time  required  to  bring  about  a  result  may  be 
practically  unimaginable  in  its  amount.  The 
span  of  the  longest  human  life  is  but  a  tick  of  the 
geological  clock.  If  genius  be  an  infinite  patience, 
we  see  it  in  the  making  of  the  earth.  Nature  is 
never  in  a  hurry.  She  works  "ohne  Hast,  ohne 
Rast." 


"  One  lesson,  Nature,  let  me  learn  of  tfo 
One  lesson  which  in  every  wind  is  blown, 
Of  toil  unsevered  from  tranquillity." 

Inorganic  Evolution. — But  what  of  the  material 
of  the  earth  throughout  its  history?  There  are 
perhaps  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  quite  distinct 
kinds  of  compounds  on  the  earth;  these  are  all 
due  to  diverse  combinations  of  some  eighty  ele- 
ments; and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  they 
have  been  gradually  made  in  the  course  of  the 
earth's  cooling.  But  have  the  elements  also  a 
history?  It  is  too  soon  to  say  much  about  in- 
organic evolution,  but  we  may  recall  the  known 
fact  that  radium  gives  rise  to  helium,  and  the 
probability  that  uranium  gives  rise  to  radium. 
There  is  here  a  hint  of  the  transmutation  or  trans- 


The  History  of  Things  65 

formation  of  elements.  Sir  William  Crookes,  for 
instance,  has  offered  suggestions  as  to  the  possible 
origin  of  the  chemical  elements  from  a  formless 
primordial  stuff  or  "protyle,"  wherein  all  matter 
was  in  the  pre-atomic  state — potential  rather  than 
actual.  He  has  gone  the  length  of  suggesting  that 
the  chemical  elements  owe  their  stability  to  their 
being  the  outcome  of  a  struggle  for  existence  in 
which  the  most  stable  survived. 

Let  us  take  a  paragraph  from  Prof.  R.  K.  Dun- 
can's marvellously  clear  exposition  of  "The  New 
Knowledge."1  "It  may  be  true  that  all  bodily 
existence  is  but  a  manifestation  of  units  of  nega- 
tive electricity  lying  embosomed  in  an  omnipresent 
ether  of  which  these  units  are,  probably,  a  con- 
ditioned part.  Mass  comes  into  existence  only  as 
the  negative  electron,  assuming  motion,  carries 
with  it  a  bound  portion  of  the  ether  in  which  it  is 
bathed;  and  furthermore  this  mass  depends  solely 
upon  the  velocity  with  which  the  negative  unit 
moves.  Our  negative  unit  on  receiving  mass  be- 
comes a  "corpuscle"  endowed  with  the  primary 
qualities  of  matter  superimposed  upon  those  of 
electricity.  Corpuscles  congregating  into  groups 
or  various  configurations  constitute  essentially  the 
atoms  of  the  chemical  elements,  locking  up  in  these 
configurations  super-terrific  energies  and  leaving 

'Prof.  R.  K.  Duncan,  "The  New  Knowledge,"  1905, 
p.  252. 


66  The  Bible  of  Nature 

but  "a  slight  residual  effect"  as  chemical  affinity 
or  gravitation  with  which  we  attempt  to  carry  on 
the  work  of  the  world.  These  atoms,  congrega- 
ting in  their  turn  as  nebulae  and  under  the  slight 
residual  force  of  gravitation,  condense  into  blazing 
suns.  The  suns  decay  in  their  temperature  and 
become  ever  more  and  more  complex  in  their 
constitution  as  the  atoms  lock  themselves,  develop- 
ing up  into  the  molecules  of  matter  to  form  a  world. 
We  see  the  molecules  growing  ever  more  and  more 
complex  as  the  world  grows  colder  until  we  attain 
to  organic  compounds.  We  see  these  organic 
compounds  united  to  form  living  beings  and  we 
see  these  living  beings  developing  into  countless 
forms,  and,  after  aeons  of  time,  evolving  into  a 
dominant  race,  which  is  us." 

This  rather  takes  one's  breath  away,  and  of 
course  the  clear-headed  author's  use  of  the  words 
"we  see"  is  highly  metaphorical.  In  this  case 
seeing  means  believing.  An  outsider  can  hardly 
refrain  from  suspecting  that  the  evolutionary 
physicists  tend  to  be  a  little  impetuous,  perhaps 
even  metaphysical.  Is  there  not  a  tendency  to 
make  a  demiurge  of  the  ether,  which,  after  all,  is 
but  a  necessary  hypothesis  ?  It  seems  a  little  un- 
certain whether  it  is  "some  mysterious  form  of 
non-matter,"  as  is  generally  believed,  or  whether 
it  may  not  be  the  lightest  and  simplest  of  the  ele- 
ments, as  Mendeleeff  suggested.  Just  as  Berkeley 


The  History  of  Things  67 

resolved  "matter"  into  affections  of  "Spirit,"  so 
the  modern  physicists  resolve  matter  into  "a  mode 
of  motion,"  and  we  cannot  think  of  the  origin  of 
motion  any  more  than  we  can  think  of  the  origin 
of  spirit.  Matter  is  resolved  into  molecules,  which 
are  resolved  into  atoms,  which  are  resolved  into 
corpuscles  surrounded  by  positive  electricity,  and 
a  corpuscle  is  a  moving  unit  of  negative  electricity 
together  with  a  '  bound  "  portion  of  the  surround- 
ing ether  which  is  its  mass.  It  is  impossible  foi 
ordinary  mortals  to  think  of  motion  apart  from 
"something"  moving,  and  the  only  "somethings" 
left  to  us  seem  to  be  electricity  and  ether.  It  seems 
all  to  end  in  motion  and  mystery,  which  is  per- 
haps a  wholesome  result.  The  common  denom- 
inator of  physical  science  allows  abundant  scope 
for  transcendental  interpretation. 

"Ins  Innre  der  Natur  dringt  kein  erschaffner  Geist." 

Interpretation  of  the  Past. — We  have  given  an  out- 
line of  the  process  of  becoming  which  seems  to 
have  led  to  the  present  phase  of  inanimate  Nature. 
Let  us  now  consider  what  we  have  got. 

Starting  from  processes  which  go  on  to-day — 
whether  these  be  weathering  or  star-making — 
science  seeks  to  reconstruct  the  stages  in  the  gene- 
sis of  the  earth.  It  tries  to  make  a  rationally 
connected  history  by  showing  that  particular 
sets  of  conditions  lead  on  to  particular  sets  of 


68  The  Bible  of  Nature 

results,1  and  in  so  doing  it  must  always  argue 
from  what  goes  on  now  to  what  may  have 
happened  long  ago. 

Just  as  Darwin  argued  from  the  experience  of 
breeders  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  what  might 
have  occurred  in  natural  breeding  millions  of 
years  ago,  so  Lyell,  before  him,  argued  from  proc- 
esses of  earth  sculpture  going  on  under  his  eyes 
to  what  might  have  occurred  in  ancient  days  when 
there  was  no  eye  to  see.  This  is  the  only  path  of 
interpretation  available,  but  it  is  obviously  one 
on  which  we  must  walk  warily.  In  appreciating 
the  value  of  certain  factors  we  must  work  from  the 
present  backward,  but  it  is  possible  that  the  pres- 
ent state  of  affairs  may  give  us,  so  to  speak,  a  false 
start. 

Development  and  Evolution. — It  seems  a  confusion 
of  thought  to  speak  of  the  evolution  of  the  earth, 
as  if  it  were  like  the  evolution  of  organisms.  We 
should  rather  compare  the  story  of  the  earth  to 

1  We  have  to  show  that  A,  B,  and  C  are  the  antecedent 
conditions  of  D,  E,  and  F;  that  A,  B,  and  C  are  all  the 
antecedents  of  D,  E,  and  F;  that  D,  E,  and  F  are  all  the 
consequents  of  A,  B,  and  C.  From  actual  experience  we 
must  give  good  reason  for  believing  that  the  sequences  we 
suppose  to  have  occurred  are  in  line,  in  principle  at  least, 
with  the  sequences  we  study  to-day.  Obviously,  too,  the 
modal  interpretation  that  we  give  must  be  as  simple  and 
generalized  as  possible.  As  we  soon  discover  that  the 
same  kind  of  sequence  occurs  and  has  occurred  over  and 
over  again,  we  make  a  formula  for  it. 


The  History  of  Things  69 

the  story  of  an  individual  development.  It  is  the 
same  earth  all  through,  just  as  it  is  the  same  or- 
ganism all  through.  In  organic  evolution,  how- 
ever, we  have  to  do  with  races,  with  a  succession 
of  new  forms,  arising  out  of  old  forms,  which  either 
disappear  or  continue  to  exist  alongside  of  their 
descendants.  We  may  perhaps  speak  of  the  evo- 
lution of  the  chemical  elements,  of  which  we  know 
very  little,  but  we  cannot  accurately  speak  of  the 
evolution  of  the  earth.  It  is  not  the  survivor 
among  many  earths  which  arose  from  the  womb 
of  a  Protogsea.  It  has  had  a  long  development, 
that  is  all.  This  may  seem  verbal  pedantry,  and 
yet  fallacy  is  apt  to  arise  from  confusing  con- 
tinuous individual  development  with  racial  evo- 
lution. 

In  the  development  of  an  individual  organism 
we  always  start  with  a  more  or  less  rich  inheritance 
which  is  the  product  of  a  long  evolution  in  previous 
ages.  We  regard  the  development  as  a  gradual 
realization  of  the  "given"  potentiality,  as  a  gradual 
expression  of  what  is  already  there.  We  believe 
that  in  an  appropriate  environment  stage  succeeds 
stage  in  an  absolutely  predetermined  fashion. 
There  is  an  identity  of  essential  substance  through- 
out, and  the  stage  of  to-day  contains  that  of  to- 
morrow, and  must,  in  normal  conditions,  give  rise 
to  it:  New  properties,  new  modes  of  behaviour, 
emerge  day  after  day,  and  although  we  do  not 


70  The  Bible  of  Nature 

know  how  the  potential  becomes  actual,  we  can 
watch  the  process.  In  an  absolutely  transparent 
egg,  like  that  of  the  moth  Botys  hyalinalis,  we  can 
follow  the  whole  visible  process  with  unbroken 
continuity — the  minting  and  coining  of  the  cater- 
pillar out  of  the  egg,  the  emergence  of  obvious 
complexity  out  of  apparent  simplicity.  We  can- 
not, of  course,  see  the  development  of  the  cater- 
pillar's instincts  any  more  than  we  can  see  the 
growth  of  the  chick's  mind  by  any  amount  of 
embryology,  but  we  see  what  takes  place,  and  it 
looks  like  an  automatic  autonomous  unfolding. 
The  only  way  in  which  we  can  meet  the  difficulty 
of  the  emergence  of  the  apparently  new  is  by  sup- 
posing that  the  apparently  new  was  potentially 
there  in  the  beginning.1  In  short,  we  read  back 
the  consequents  into  the  antecedents.  So,  in  the 
development  of  the  earth,  we  have  to  do  with  what 
we  believe  to  be  a  perfectly  continuous  series  of 
distributions  and  re-distributions  of  matter  and 
energy  in  the  ambient  ether.  The  meteorites  be- 
come a  nebula,  and  the  nebula  becomes  a  star. 
It  differentiates  and  integrates  as  it  cools,  and  we 
try  to  chronicle  stage  after  stage.  We  do  not  sup- 


1  Later  on  we  shall  have  to  qualify  this  by  recognizing 
that  the  living  organism  is  in  a  real  sense  '  creative,'  using 
its  experience  to  make  thereof  something  new;  but  even 
this  creative  power  is  'given,'  that  is  to  say,  inborn. 


The  History  of  Things  71 

pose  that  the  sum-total  of  matter  and  energy  in 
the  whole  system  of  things  suffers  any  loss  or 
makes  any  gain.  If  apparently  new  properties 
arise,  we  believe  that  they  are  old  properties  in 
new  guise.  We  can  make  apparently  very  new 
things  ourselves,  such  as  dynamite,  but  we  know 
that  the  properties  of  dynamite  can  be  resolved 
into  the  properties  of  simpler  things.  Even  when 
we  discover  a  new  thing  like  Radium,  with  alto- 
gether unexpected  properties,  we  soon  follow  it  up 
by  discovering  radio-activity  in  many  other  cases. 
It  may  be,  for  all  we  know,  an  intrinsic  property  of 
matter  to  emit  rays.  In  any  case,  we  revise  our 
conception  of  what  is  "given,"  and  say  that  there 
is  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  In  short,  in  the 
history  of  the  earth,  we  believe  we  have  to  do  with 
a  continuous  natural  development,  in  which  ante- 
cedents pass  over  into  their  consequents,  and  we 
feel  no  need  for  any  cause  in  the  strict  sense  ex- 
cept the  first  cause  which  is  taken  for  granted 
throughout. 

Later  on,  we  shall  try  to  show  that  this  way  of 
looking  at  things  must  be  somewhat  enlarged 
when  we  come  to  the  emergence  of  living  organisms 
upon  the  earth,  when  we  have  to  do  with  autono- 
mous agents,  when  we  study  intelligent  behaviour, 
when  we  face  the  biggest  fact  in  all  science — man, 
with  his  ideas  and  ideals — a  thinking  reed,  who, 
if  the  universe  should  crush  him,  would  still  be 


72  The  Bible  of  Nature 

nobler  than  the  universe  in  knowing  that  he  was 
crushed.1 

Mechanical  Categories  Suffice. — If  we  leave  out  of 
account,  in  the  meantime,  life  and  all  results  that 
can  be  referred  to  the  hand  of  life,  and  consider 
the  history  of  the  inanimate  world,  either  as  re- 
gards its  great  events  or  in  such  details  as  the  mak- 
ing of  a  volcanic  mountain,  the  carving  of  a  val- 
ley, or  the  formation  of  a  river-system,  we  find 
that  it  is  possible  to  give  a  more  or  less  probable 
mechanical  account  of  the  various  sequences 
which  may  have  led  up  to  the  results  we  know  and 
admire.  Thus  the  history  of  the  Niagara  Gorge 
and  its  relation  to  the  Great  Lakes,  past  and  pres- 
ent, has  been  worked  out — up  to  a  certain  degree 
of  security — in  a  most  beautiful  and  convincing 
manner.  From  what  we  know  of  present  physi- 
cal and  chemical  processes  we  can  interpret  the 
past  with  considerable  precision — with  increasing 
precision  every  year.  And  the  general  result  which 
we  must  bear  in  mind  is  that  mechanical  categories 
suffice.  In  inanimate  nature,  science  sees  a  sys- 

1  "  Fences  de  Pascal/''  Chap.  II,  x. 

"L'homme  n'est  qu'un  roseau,  le  plus  faible  de  la 
nature,  mais  c'est  un  roseau  pensant.  II  ne  faut  pas  que 
I'univers  entier  s'arme  pour  1  'e" eraser.  Une  vapeur,  une 
goutte  d'eau,  suffit  pour  le  tuer.  Mais  quand  runivers 
l'e*craserait,  Miomme  serai t  encore  plus  noble  que  ce  qui 
le  tue,  parce  qu'il  sait  qu'il  meurt;  et  1'avantage  que 
I'univers  a  BUT  lui,  runivers  n'en  sait  rien." 


The  History  of  Things  73 

tern  whose  relations  of  sequence  admit  of  being  re- 
stated by  means  of  equations  of  motion.  Whether 
we  try  to  interpret  the  history  of  the  solar  system 
or  the  genesis  of  minerals,  the  origin  of  a  mountain 
chain  or  of  the  granite  that  helps  to  compose  it, 
the  work  of  a  glacier  or  the  formation  of  a  stalac- 
tite, we  work  with  reliable  formulae  of  gravita- 
tion, attraction  and  repulsion,  hydrostatics  and 
thermodynamics,  and  so  on — i.  e.,  with  purely 
mechanical  formulae,  and  we  do  not  find  that  they 
are  insufficient.  If  we  take  the  known  properties 
resident  in  matter  and  the  laws  of  energy  as  data, 
we  can  plausibly  reconstruct  any  particular  part 
of  the  inanimate  world.  "Gebt  mir  Materie/' 
Kant  said,  "und  ich  will  daraus  eine  Welt 
schaffen." 

Do  Things  Make  Themselves? — When  we  con- 
sider these  two  general  results,  first,  that  the  be- 
coming of  the  earth  reads  like  a  story  of  continu- 
ous individual  development,  as  of  an  egg  into  a 
chick;  and,  second,  that  in  our  redescription  of 
both  the  present  and  the  past  of  any  particular 
part  of  inanimate  nature  the  categories  of  me- 
chanics are  sufficient,  we  get  a  strong  impression 
that  there  is  much  truth  in  what  Kingsley  made 
Nature  say  in  his  immortal  "Water-Babies," — 
"I  make  things  make  themselves." 

We  look  back  on  the  history  of  inanimate  nat- 
ure and  we  see  obvious  complexity  arising  out  of 


74  The  Bible  of  Nature 

apparent  simplicity — a  nebula  becomes  an  intri- 
cate earth;  we  see  a  higher  order  emerging  out  of 
a  lower — a  system  of  sun  and  planets  is  established ; 
we  see  a  multitude  of  parts  working  together  with 
the  smoothness  of  a  well-made  machine;  we  see 
what  we  call  beauty  and  what,  if  we  had  been  the 
makers  of  the  history,  we  should  certainly  have 
called  progress.  It  is  very  wonderful.  And  yet, 
in  a  certain  sense,  are  we  not  warranted  in  saying 
that  Nature  has  made  herself  what  she  is,  i.e., 
that  any  particular  result  is  the  natural  prede- 
termined predictable  outcome  of  the  antecedent 
conditions  ?  Few  feel  any  particular  necessity  for 
invoking  the  aid  of  a  deus  ex  machina  to  account 
for  the  frost-flowers  seen  on  the  window-pane  on 
a  winter  morning — which,  in  fairy-like  beauty,  re- 
main for  a  brief  space  as  external  reminiscences  of 
the  evening  talk — but  each  spray  of  that  frosty 
pane  is  molecularly  as  complex  as  the  Milky  Way 
seems  to  our  eyes.  It  has  been  .said  that  the  unde- 
vout  astronomer  is  mad,  but  Laplace  was  as 
astronomer  quite  right  in  saying  in  answer  to 
Napoleon's  famous  question  regarding  God,  that 
he  had  no  need  of  that  hypothesis.  He  was  right, 
in  the  first  place,  because  science  is  a  perfectly 
definite  business  of  formulating  sequences  in 
terms  of  sense-experience,  and  is  false  to  its  task 
when  it  obscures  its  deficiencies  by  interpolating 
formulae  of  an  entirely  different  order.  And  he 


The  History  of  Things  75 

was  right,  in  the  second  place,  because  in  the  sci- 
entific interpretation  of  any  particular  occurrence 
in  inanimate  nature,  we  have  no  reason  to  believe 
that  mechanical  categories  are  not  quite  sufficient. 
To  conclude,  however,  that  this  scientific  interpre- 
tation is  in  terms  of  concepts  which  are  self-ex- 
planatory, or  that  it  is  the  only  interpretation,  01 
that  it  is  in  itself  a  satisfying  human  interpreta- 
tion, is  quite  another  matter. 

Recoil  from  the  Scientific  Position. — The  scien- 
tific conception  of  the  physical  universe  as  a  sort 
of  world-egg  developing  of  itself,  capable  in 
virtue  of  the  properties  resident  in  it  of  passing 
from  phase  to  phase  in  the  course  of  aeons,  like 
a  machine  wound  up  not  only  to  go  but  to  improve 
itself  by  going,  is  repugnant  to  many  minds,  and 
various  attempts  have  been  made  to  wriggle  away 
from  it.  Fundamentally,  perhaps,  this  recoil  is 
due  to  a  misunderstanding  of  the  aim  of  science, 
a  failure  to  see  that  a  descriptive  account  of  oc- 
currences is  not  an  explanation  of  them,  and  cannot 
be  put  in  opposition  to  other  quite  incommensu- 
rable ways  of  summing  up  the  history.  But  let  us 
consider  for  a  moment  how  some  have  tried  to  put 
a  brake  on  the  impetuously  driven  chariot  of 
science. 

(1)  It  is  useful  to  point  out  that  many  of  the 
riddles  of  inanimate  nature  are  still  unsolved,  for 
nothing  is  more  prejudicial  to  progress  than  giving 


76  The  Bible  of  Nature 

a  false  simplicity  to  facts,  or  "giving  to  the  ignorant, 
as  a  gospel,  in  the  name  of  Science,  the  rough 
guesses  of  yesterday  that  to-morrow  should  for- 
get."1 He  would  be  a  bold  man  who  should  say 
that  he  thoroughly  understood  the  tides,  not  to 
speak  of  the  weather,  and  no  astronomer  pretends 
that  he  really  knows  how  the  worlds  were  formed. 
He  thinks  that  he  is  on  the  sure  track  of  knowing, 
that  is  all.  How  little  we  know  of  the  possible 
origin  of  the  eighty  or  so  different  kinds  of  ele- 
ments? But  this  sort  of  argumentum  ad  igno- 
rantiam,  while  healthy  enough  within  limits,  can 
give  no  permanent  satisfaction.  It  crumbles  when 
we  read  the  history  of  scientific  progress  in  a  single 
century.  The  lap  of  the  future  is  full  of  scientific 
puzzles,  but  who  will  pick  out  those  that  are  in- 
soluble, and  pin  his  faith  on  a  gratuitous  and  really 
presumptuous  ignorabimusf 

(2)  Another  form  of  the  same  kind  of  argument 
is  also  useful  within  limits.  It  consists  in  point- 
ing out  that  many  of  the  terms  currently  used  in 
chemico-physical  interpretations  of  inanimate  nat- 
ure are  not  really  .simple,  but  are  big  with  mystery. 
What  is  gravitation,  for  instance,  or  what  is  elec- 
tricity, or  what  is  matter  itself  ?  If  this  argument 
means  that  science  starts  by  postulating  some- 
thing "given,"  it  is  sound;  but  if  it  says  that  gravi- 

iW.  Bateson,  "Materials  for  the  Study  of  Variation," 
London,  1894. 


The  History  of  Things  77 

tation  or  electricity  is  irreducible,  it  is  illegitimate. 
It  is  faint-hearted  and  premature  to  assume  that 
what  is  at  present  irreducible  will  remain  irreduci- 
ble, unless  some  good  reason  can  be  given  for  so 
judging.  It  yields  no  permanent  satisfaction  when 
we  reflect  on  the  past,  when  we  consider  the  suc- 
cess which  has  attended  scientific  efforts  to  reduce 
the  number  of  supposed  separate  entities  or  pow- 
ers. The  use  of  "William  of  Occam's  razor" — 
Entia  non  sunt  mvltiplicanda  prceter  necessi- 
tatem — has  already  had  its  reward.  It  has  given 
us  a  deeper  conviction  of  the  "oneness  "  of  Nature. 
We  need  simply  recall  how  "Caloric"  was  elim- 
inated, yielding  to  the  modern  interpretation  of 
heat  "as  a  mode  of  motion";  how  emanations  of 
"Light"  had  to  follow,  when  the  undulatory  or 
the  electro-magnetic  theory  of  their  nature  was 
established;  how  "Force"  itself  has  become  a 
mere  measure  of  motion;  and  how  even  "Matter" 
tends  to  be  resolved  into  units  of  negative  elec- 
tricity, carrying  with  them  a  bound  portion  of  the 
ether  in  which  they  are  bathed.  By  all  means,  let 
us  have  a  criticism  of  the  categories  of  science — • 
which  is  indeed  part  of  the  business  of  a  useful 
philosophy — but  let  us  avoid  the  dogmatism  of 
asserting  that  the  scientific  unification  of  nature 
has  reached  its  limits.  "God  said,  'Let  Newton 
be/  and  there  was  light,"  and  another  Newton  may 
be  born  to-morrow. 


78  The  Bible  of  Nature 

(3)  Another  line  of  argument  is  less  easily  dealt 
with.  The  scientific  position  is  that  natural  hap- 
penings are  due  to  properties  resident  in  the  given 
material,  whether  it  be  a  nebula  or  a  dew-drop. 
But  do  we  know  all  the  resident  properties  ?  May 
there  not  be  resident  properties  as  yet  undiscov- 
ered ?  May  there  not  be  resident  properties  which 
are  by  their  very  nature  beyond  scientific  discovery? 
The  answer  to  this  argument  is  Experiment.  We 
can  work  only  with  the  resident  properties  that 
we  know,  and  if  by  experiment  we  get  a  result 
which  cannot  be  accounted  for  in  terms  of  the 
known  resident  properties,  then  we  must  admit 
that  some  resident  properties  have  escaped  detec- 
tion, and  are  there  though  we  cannot  define  them. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  commonplace  of  scien- 
tific procedure  has  often  led  to  the  discovery  of 
previously  unknown  resident  properties.  But  if 
we  can  give  an  adequate  account  of  an  occurrence 
in  the  laboratory  in  terms  of  known  resident  prop- 
erties, we  are  justified  in  trying  to  do  the  same  for 
the  grandest  cosmic  phenomena.  If  we  could 
convince  ourselves,  as  some  have  convinced  them- 
selves, that  a  sum  of  money  can  disappear  from 
a  safe  without  any  opening,  we  should  have  to  ad- 
mit that  there  are  properties  resident  in  matter 
that  the  physicist  is  unaware  of.  But  who  can 
say  that  he  knows  of  any  occurrence  in  inanimate 
nature  which  the  known  resident  properties  are 


The  History  of  Things  79 

obviously  incapable  of  accounting  for?  If  the 
letters  of  a  jumbled  fount  of  type  or  the  fragments 
of  a  smashed  machine  were  to  rise  up  and  arrange 
themselves  in  working  order,  we  should  have  to 
revise  our  mechanical  categories;  but  we  do  not 
know  of  any  such  phenomena  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  inanimate  nature. 

It  is  open  to  any  one  to  say  that  there  is  a  spirit 
in  the  nebula  and  a  Psyche  in  the  dew-drop — just 
as  Haeckel  says  that  there  is  a  permanent  soul  in 
every  atom;  but  if  these  are  supposed  to  be  oper- 
ative, the  scientific  analyst  must  say  that  he  finds 
no  need  for  the  hypothesis,  since  the  laws  of  mo- 
tion suffice  for  him,  while,  if  they  are  supposed  to 
be  inoperative,  the  scientific  analyst  usually  ap- 
plies William  of  Occam's  razor  without  remorse. 

The  form  in  which  this  line  of  thought  seems 
most  attractive  is  briefly  this.  When  we  consider 
any  particular  corner  in  the  inanimate  world,  say, 
the  making  of  the  Niagara  Falls  or  the  making  of 
the  frost-flowers  on  the  window,  we  do  not  re- 
quire in  our  redescription  more  than  mechanical 
formulae.  But  when  we  consider  Nature  not  in 
isolated  pieces  but  as  a  harmonious  whole,  when 
we  recognize  the  progressive  order,  the  orderly 
progress,  and  the  beauty  of  it  all,  when  we  go  on 
to  recognize  the  probability  that  the  earth  has 
been  the  parent  of  its  tenants,  then  we  must  read 
back  into  the  world-egg  with  which  we  start  a 


80  The  Bible  of  Nature 

potentiality  of  giving  rise  to  all  that  follows,  and 
thus  the  Lowest  Common  Denominator  of  Science 
becomes  the  counterpart  of  the  Greatest  Common 
Measure  of  Philosophy.1 

Nature  of  Scientific  Interpretation. — But  the  more 
immediate  answer  to  the  recoil  from  the  scientific 
position  is  to  be  found  by  considering  what  most 
modern  workers  mean  by  scientific  interpretation. 

The  scientific  interpretation  of  inanimate  nat- 
ure is  always  after  this  pattern:  Given  a  certain 
collocation  of  material  particles  in  certain  con- 
ditions, the  result  after  a  certain  time  will  be  so 
and  so.2 

The  problem  is  to  redescribe  natural  hap- 
penings in  the  simplest  available  terms,  namely, 
in  terms  of  mechanics  in  the  wide  sense.  Some 
of  the  terms  used  are  simpler  or  more  irreducible 
than  others;  thus  that  form  of  mutual  attraction 
which  we  call  gravitation  is  probably  more  irre- 
ducible than  what  we  call  chemical  affinity. 
Some  which  seemed  irreducible  in  the  past  have 
undergone  simplification;  thus  Heat  is  no  longer 
an  "element"  or  an  "entity"  or  a  "force"— but 

1  To  identify  them  violently,  as  a  recent  writer  does, 
who  calls  the  Ether  "the  fountain  of  all  Being,"  "the 
hitherto  unknown  God,"  seems  to  us  to  be  a  complete 
misunderstanding,  and  as  grotesque  an  anthropomorphism 
as  any  savage  is  guilty  of. 

•  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  in  many  cases  we  have  to 
write  uncertain  instead  of  certain,  but  let  that  pass. 


The  History  of  Things  81 

"a  mode  of  motion."  Some  which  are  not  re- 
ducible at  present  will  probably  undergo  simpli- 
fying analysis  in  the  future,  for  the  physicist  may 
some  day  discover  the  true  inwardness  of  gravita- 
tion, and  be  able  to  tell  us  what  really  happens  in 
the  invisible  world  when  the  apple  falls  in  the 
orchard.  Progress  is  continuous  toward  the  ideal 
of  redescribing  all  the  occurrences  in  inanimate 
nature  in  terms  of  the  laws  of  motion;  one  fastness 
after  another  has  given  up  its  keys;  one  riddle 
after  another  has  been  read;  all  of  which  means  a 
scientific  demonstration  of  the  unity  of  nature. 

It  is  true  that  the  redescriptions  which  are  given 
of  intricate  occurrences  do  not  sound  simple;  the 
more  thorough  they  are,  the  more  do  they  pass  be- 
yond the  comprehension  of  the  unlearned  and 
become  preserves  for  the  mathematically  minded; 
even  more  than  in  ancient  days  is  it  true  that  the 
portal  of  the  scientific  academy  bears  the  legend, 
"Let  no  one  ignorant  of  mathematics  enter  here." 
But  the  point  is  that  the  assumptions  of  the  me- 
chanical interpretation  of  inanimate  nature  are 
simple,  in  the  sense  that  the  laws  of  motion  are 
simple.  It  comes  to  this,  then,  that  the  birth  and 
death  of  worlds,  the  harmony  of  the  spheres,  the 
sweep  of  our  whole  solar  system  in  space — in  short, 
the  greatest  of  cosmic  phenomena — submit  to 
being  studied  by  the  same  exact  methods,  and  to 
being  redescribed  in  the  same  simple  terms  as  the 


82  The  Bible  of  Nature 

thunderstorm  and  the  dew-drop,  the  sublime  ar- 
chitecture of  the  mountains  and  the  evanescent 
beauty  of  the  frost-flowers  on  the  window  pane. 
It  surely  shows  us  that  we  live  in  a  universe  not 
a  multi verse,  if  such  things  be  so;  the  very  fact  that 
the  world  is  scientifically  intelligible  shows  that 
there  is  a  rational  unity  behind  it;  it  surely  shows 
us  that  Man  is  no  freak  of  nature  who  can  hold 
the  earth  in  a  balance  and  measure  the  heavens 
in  his  scale.  Strictly  speaking,  science  rede- 
scribes  and  reconstructs  by  means  of  symbols— • 
conceptual  formulae — such  as  matter,  electricity, 
ether,  gravitation,  chemical  affinity.  There  must 
be  the  counterfoils  of  reality  in  these,  else  science 
would  not  work  out  practically  as  it  does;  we  could 
not  trust  it  and  predict  by  means  of  it  as  we  do. 
But  a  law  of  nature  is  no  longer  regarded  by  any 
scientific  man  as  a  necessity  which  things  have  to 
obey;  it  is  rather  a  summary  expression  of  certain 
constancies  of  scientific  experience. 

Strictly  speaking,  as  regards  inanimate  nature, 
science  finds  no  true  causes.  It  is  a  mechanical 
axiom  that  what  is  in  the  results  was  also  in  the 
conditions,  and  what  science  is  continually  doing 
is  to  show  that  one  particular  collocation  of  matter 
and  energy  passes  into  another.  Sometimes  the 
resultant  is  obviously  just  the  components  over 
again  and  no  further  explanation  is  needed  or 
possible;  in  many  cases,  however,  science  has 


The  History  of  Things  83 

simply  to  record  that  the  sequence  occurs.  Ho*w 
it  exactly  occurs  is  not  known.  Strictly  speaking, 
science  must  always  start  with  a  good  deal  "given," 
which  it  takes  for  granted.  In  the  particular  case 
we  have  been  discussing  the  something  "given" 
is  the  nebula.  The  scientific  conception  of  this  is 
that  it  was  like  the  nebulse  we  see  in  the  heavens 
to-day,  a  whirling  system  of  meteorites  or  planet- 
esimals.  At  the  same  time,  if  it  be  true  that  not 
only  the  inanimate  but  the  animate  as  well  has 
grown  out  of  the  nebula,  then  we  must  read  back 
into  it  all  the  grandeur  of  all  its  consequents. 
Finally,  it  must  be  clearly  understood  that  science 
never  even  asks  the  irrepressible  question,  why 
has  all  this  become  as  it  has  become  ? 

Thus  science  recognizes  the  fundamental  mys- 
teriousness  of  things,  (1)  as  regards  its  Common 
Denominator;  (2)  as  regards  the  chains  of  se- 
quence it  chronicles,  but  does  not  explain;  (3)  as 
regards  the  beginning. 

As  one  of  our  philosophers,1  has  said:  "Some 
people  write  and  talk  as  if  the  discovery  of  the 
natural  cause  of  an  event  meant  the  withdrawal  of 
the  event  from  the  sphere  of  divine  agency.  Ac- 
cording to  this  way  of  thinking,  the  gradual  suc- 
cess of  science  in  reducing  all  phenomena  to  nat- 
ural law  is  tantamount  to  the  banishment  of  God 
from  the  universe.  He  becomes  a  hypothesis  that 
'Prof.  A.  S.  Pringle-Pattison. 


84  The  Bible  of  Nature 

is  not  required,  or  if  any  room  be  left  for  his  action, 
it  must  be  at  some  point  in  the  "dark  background 
and  abysm  of  time"  when  the  orderly  system 
of  the  universe  is  supposed  to  have  been  set 
agoing. 

Now,  what  is  the  misunderstanding  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  think  that  there  is  some  opposition  or 
antithesis  between  saying  that  the  Earth  grew  out 
of  a  nebula  and  saying  that  God  created  the  world 
by  the  word  of  His  power  ?  The  basal  misunder- 
standing is  a  failure  to  see  that  the  word  ultimate 
does  not  occur  in  the  scientific  dictionary.  For 
particular  purposes — of  formulating  and  thereby 
perhaps  working  with  natural  processes — science 
pursues  certain  methods  and  reaches  certain  re- 
sults. Its  outlook  is  in  no  way  inconsistent  with 
the  emotional  outlook,  but  it  seems  fairly  obvious 
that  one  must  not  try  to  make  one  sentence  of  the 
two  statements,  "O  wunderschon  ist  Gottes  Erde, 
und  schon  auf  ihr  ein  Mensch  zu  sein,"  and 
"  Bodies  attract  one  another  with  a  force  propor- 
tional directly  to  the  product  of  their  masses  and 
inversely  as  the  square  of  their  mutual  distance." 
There  is  no  reason  to  surrender  the  philosophical 
outlook,  with  its  conviction  that  "  In  our  life  alone 
does  Nature  live";  but  we  must  not  mix  this  up 
in  any  way  with  an  inquiry  into  radio-activity. 

Again,  the  aim  of  science  is  not  to  explain  but 
to  redescribe  in  simpler  terms,  to  find  a  common 


The  History  of  Things  85 

denominator,  but  its  interpretations  are  always  in 
terms  of  conceptual  formulae — such  as  matter, 
energy,  ether,  gravitation,  chemical  affinity,  and 
so  on — which  are  not  themselves  self-explanatory; 
which  are  in  fact  only  intellectual  counters,  sym- 
bols of  the  mysterious  reality. 

Again,  science  continually  tries  to  refund  one 
natural  phenomenon  into  another,  seeking  to 
show  that  given  certain  conditions  A,  B,  C,  cer- 
tain results  D,  E,  F  will  always  follow.  When 
D,  E,  F  are  simply  A,  B,  C  in  a  new  guise,  as 
when  we  get  a  single  resultant  force  out  of  sev- 
eral components,  the  scientific  interpretation  is 
complete.  When  D,  E,  F  are  quite  different 
from  A,  B,  C,  as  when  we  get  water  by  combining 
hydrogen  and  oxygen,  we  know  that  the  conditions 
have  somehow  passed  over  into  the  resultants,  but 
we  cannot  tell  how  the  result  is  as  it  is.  This  is 
true  of  most  scientific  interpretations.  They  do 
not  deal  with  causes  in  the  sense  in  which  we  speak 
of  a  personal  agency  as  a  cause. 

Again,  science  in  its  historical  treatment  of 
things  always  starts  from  something  "given," 
which  it  does  not  explain,  which  in  the  last  re- 
source it  cannot  explain.  From  this  something 
"given"  there  seems  to  be  a  continuous  develop- 
ment, and  it  is  therefore  believed  that  this  ante- 
cedent had  in  it  the  potentiality  of  all  that  comes 
out  of  it.  Thus,  if  order,  progress,  harmony, 


86  The  Bible  of  Nature 

beauty,  intelligence,  come  out  of  it,  they  must 
somehow  have  been  potentially  in  it.  We  may 
try  to  substantiate  the  original  antecedent  in  ab- 
straction from  its  consequents,  we  must  do  so  in 
pursuing  the  scientific  method.  We  may  try  to 
think  of  the  nebula  as  a  whirling  mass  of  meteor- 
ites, and  nothing  more;  but  if  the  whole  solar 
system  came  out  of  that,  we  must  as  philosophers, 
if  not  as  scientists,  say  that  "There  is  nothing  in 
the  End  which  was  not  also  in  the  Beginning," 
and  if  there  is  Logos  at  the  end,  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  was  also  at  the  beginning. 

With  this  explanation,  is  it  not  possible  to  return 
without  repugnance  to  the  scientific  position  with 
its  central  idea  of  a  continuous  natural  develop- 
ment? 

But  some  one  may  say,  I  am  not  clear  in  regard 
to  what  you  have  said  regarding  science  not  pre- 
tending to  give  explanations,  but  this  much  I 
gather,  that  the  picture  you  leave  with  us  is  that 
of  a  world  developing  of  itself.  That  is  so,  if  you 
do  not  forget  to  supplement  this  with  the  quotation 
from  Kant  with  which  we  closed  the  previous  lec- 
ture: "The  universe  must  sink  into  the  abyss  of 
nothingness,  unless  we  admit  that,  besides  this 
infinite  chain  of  contingencies,  there  exists  some- 
thing that  is  primal  and  self-subsistent,  something 
which  as  the  cause  of  this  phenomenal  world  se- 
cures its  continuance  and  preservation." 


The  History  of  Things  87 

What  we  have  been  trying  to  show  is,  that  the 
conception  of  this  earth  of  ours  with  which  Science 
works,  and  works  to  such  purpose — both  theoreti- 
cal and  practical — is  the  conception  of  a  continu- 
ous natural  development  in  which  any  particular 
series  of  sequences  is  describable  in  terms  of  mat- 
ter and  motion.  But  why  should  the  scientific 
mind  be  so  afraid  of  the  insinuation  of  a  metaphys- 
ical principle?  Simply  because  it  is  a  confusion 
of  thought  that  paralyzes  intelligence. 

What  we  are  driving  at  has  been  clearly  stated 
by  Prof.  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison :  1  "Natural 
explanations — i.  e.,  regulated  sequences  and  co- 
existences of  phenomena — are  what  every  sci- 
ence has  to  seek  in  its  own  sphere;  and,  ac- 
cordingly, science  justly  regards  as  suspect  the 
explanation  of  any  phenomena  by  the  immedi- 
ate causality  of  a  metaphysical  agent.  The  inter- 
jection of  such  a  causality  into  the  empirical  con- 
nections which  she  seeks  to  unravel,  she  treats  as 
a  form  of  ignava  ratio"  "It  makes  the  investi- 
gation of  causes  a  very  easy  task,"  says  Kant,  "if 
we  refer  such  and  such  phenomena  immediately 
to  the  unsearchable  will  and  counsel  of  the  Su- 
preme Wisdom,  whereas  we  ought  to  investigate 
their  cause  in  the  general  mechanism  of  nature. 
This  is  to  consider  the  labor  of  reason  as  ended, 

1  "The  New  Psychology  and  Automatism"  in  Man's 
Place  in  the  Cosmos  and  Other  Essays,  2nd  edM  1902. 


88  The  Bible  of  Nature 

when  we  have  merely  dispensed  with  its  employ- 
ment." 

Do  we  mean,  then,  that  from  such  a  beginning 
as  a  swarm  of  meteorites,  the  whole  earth  with  all 
its  beauty  and  order  has  grown?  That  is  what 
science  seems  to  suggest.  What  a  poor  and  inade- 
quate beginning,  you  may  say,  for  such  a  wonder- 
ful result.  But  has  any  one  a  right  to  say  this? 
Whence  came  the  swarm  of  meteorites  and  all 
that  they  contained,  what  is  electricity,  what  is  the 
ether  ?  What  is  the  reality  behind  all  the  counters 
whose  moves  it  is  permitted  to  science  to  formulate 
and  eventually  to  predict? 

Do  we  mean  that  from  such  a  beginning  the 
whole  earth  with  all  its  beauty  and  order  has 
grown  without  direction  from  without  ?  That  is 
what  science  seems  to  say,  that  the  direction  is 
from  within,  that  the  Kosmos  was  already  in  the 
Nebula,  that  there  never  was  any  chaos  at  all,  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  end  which  was  not  also  in 
the  beginning.  And  if  you  like  to  add,  "  In  the 
beginning  was  the  Logos,"  science  has  no  word 
to  say  against  it. 

Lafcadio  Hearn  tells  us  that  in  the  house  of 
any  old  Japanese  family  the  guest  is  likely  to  be 
shown  some  of  the  heirlooms.  .  .  .  "  A  pretty  little 
box,  perhaps,  will  be  set  before  you.  Opening  it 
you  will  see  only  a  beautiful  silk  bag,  closed  with 
a  silk  running-cord  decked  with  tiny  tassels.  .  .  . 


The  History  of  Things  89 

You  open  the  bag  and  see  within  it  another  bag, 
of  a  different  quality  of  silk,  but  very  fine.  Open 
that,  and  lo!  a  third,  which  contains  a  fourth, 
which  contains  a  fifth,  which  contains  a  sixth, 
which  contains  a  seventh  bag,  which  contains  the 
strongest,  roughest,  hardest  vessel  of  Chinese  clay 
that  you  ever  beheld.  Yet  it  is  not  only  curious 
but  precious;  it  may  be  more  than  a  thousand 
years  old." 

Historical  natural  science  has  to  do  with  a  sim- 
ilar process  of  unwrapping — it  removes  one  silken 
envelope  after  another,  trying  to  unravel  the  pat- 
tern and  count  the  threads — and  what  is  finally 
revealed,  though  it  seem  to  the  careless  but  as  hard 
clay,  is  something — if  we  may  say  something — so 
very  old,  so  very  wonderful,  that  science  can  give 
no  name  to  it. 


in 

ORGANISMS  AND  THEIR  ORIGIN 


Ill 

ORGANISMS  AND  THEIR  ORIGIN 

The  Variety  of  Living  Creatures. — The  earth  has 
come  to  be  tenanted  by  practically  countless  hosts 
of  living  creatures,  whose  ranks  are  continually 
being  thinned,  and  continually  being  recruited. 
There  are  legions  upon  legions  of  species,  that 
is  to  say,  different  kinds  of  living  creatures — 
groups  of  individualities,  worthy  of  a  specific 
name,  because  they  differ  more  from  the  nearest 
group  than  brothers  or  cousins  differ  from  one  an- 
other, and  because  they  breed  true  with  their  own 
kind.  What  a  motley  assemblage  it  is!  There 
are  plants  so  minute,  e.  g.,  the  Bacteria,  that  many 
can  hang  on  the  point  of  a  needle;  there  are  the 
hyssops  on  the  wall  and  the  cedars  of  Lebanon. 
There  are  animals  so  minute,  e.  g.,  the  Trypano- 
some  of  Sleeping  Sickness,  that  we  require  our  best 
microscope  to  see  them,  and  there  are  the  gigantic 
Saurians  of  by-gone  ages,  and  the  still  surviving 
giants  like  the  elephants  and  the  giraffes  and  the 
great  whales.  The  simplest  organisms  are  single 
cells — invisible  units  of  living  matter;  the  more 
complex  are  vast  cities  of  cells  with  millions  of 
component  units.  What  variety  of  habitat  there 
93 


94  The  Bible  of  Nature 

is;  their  lines  are  gone  over  all  the  earth.  The 
explorers  find  no  corner  where  life  has  not  outrun 
them.  Nansen  found  minute  living  creatures  in 
ice  pools  in  the  Farthest  North;  the  Natural  His- 
tory of  the  Antarctic  already  fills  several  large  vol- 
umes. On  the  earth  and  under  the  earth;  in  all 
the  waters  high  and  low;  on  the  mountain  tops 
and  in  the  great  abysses  of  the  deep  sea;  free  in 
the  air  and  fettered  in  the  penetralia  of  other 
creatures,  life  abounds.  What  a  long  gamut  of 
activity  there  is,  from  the  dull  sentience  of  many 
of  the  simplest,  which  seem  sometimes  to  have  no 
more  than  one  distinct  action  or  reaction,  and 
the  sleep-life  of  the  higher  plants,  to  the  complex 
instinctive  routine  of  ants  and  bees,  and  the  intelli- 
gent behavior  familiar  to  us  in  the  big-brained 
educable  birds  and  mammals.  How  difficult  it 
is  to  find  what  is  essentially  characteristic  of  them 
all  as  distinguished  from  the  inanimate  creation. 
But  that  is  what  we  must  now  try  to  do.1 

Characteristics  of  Livingness. — The  great  oak  is 
instinct  with  life  in  every  leaf  and  twig  and  root- 
let, it  is  a  whirlpool  of  whirlpools  of  intensely 
active  corpuscles,  yet  it  outlives  many  generations 
of  men,  and  stands,  like  the  tree  of  Igdrasil,  as  an 
emblem  of  eternal  life.  What  a  contrast  to  the 
earth  beneath  our  feet,  which  we  usually  call 

»See  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  "The  Science  of  Life," 
Blackie  &  Sons,  Glasgow,  1899. 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  95 

"lifeless."  But  a  flash  comes  from  a  passing 
cloud,  and  the  oak  is  dead.  Where  is  our  clear 
contrast  now  ?  We  watch  a  bird  flying  overhead : 
"it  rests  upon  the  air,  subdues  it,  surpasses  it, 
outraces  it."  What  a  contrast  to  the  stone  beneath 
our  feet,  which  we  usually  call  "inert"!  But  the 
stone  is  thrown,  and  the  bird  falls  dead.  Where  is 
our  clear  contrast  now  ?  A  slight  blow  on  the  back 
of  the  head,  and  what  we  call  "life,"  where  is  it? 
It  is  extremely  difficult  to  find  an  absolute  criterion 
between  what  once  was  living  and  what  now  is 
dead.  In  many  cases,  we  can  obviously  say  of 
the  killed  creature  that  its  machinery  is  shattered; 
in  other  cases,  we  can  only  say  that  the  wheels  have 
ceased  to  go  round.  A  few  hours  ago  the  eggs 
of  that  bird  were  living — intensely  living — in  her 
nest,  but  the  bird  is  dead  and  the  eggs  are  growing 
cold.  Life  is  slipping  away.  Take  them  still 
and  hatch  them  in  the  incubator,  and  you  will  soon 
see  how  really  living  they  are.  Take  them  next 
day  and  you  might  as  well  take  stones.  Pro- 
fessor Waller  says  there  is  an  electrical  "blaze 
reaction"  which  will  infallibly  tell  us  whether  the 
"vital  spark"  has  gone  out  in  the  forsaken  egg 
or  in  the  wind-blown  seed,  but  we  do  not  know 
much  about  it.  The  sure  test  of  livingness  or 
non-livingness  is,  of  course,  in  results. 

Puzzling  Phenomena. — The  phenomena  of  "latent 
life"  are  very  puzzling,  and  deserving  of  far  more 


96  The  Bible  of  Nature 

attention  than  they  have  as  yet  received.  The 
dried  seed  may  remain  alive  without  detectable 
signs  of  life  for  several  decennia  (though  not  since 
the  time  of  Pharaoh,  as  used  to  be  said).  Cer- 
tain little  threadworms  (Anguillulidse)  may  be 
kept  dry  without  any  discernible  hint  of  life  for 
fourteen  years,  and  yet  become  vigorous  again 
when  put  into  water.  At  any  time  during  the  four- 
teen years  this  revivification  may  occur,  but  not  in 
the  fifteenth  year!  What  is  life  that  it  can  remain 
so  long  without  asserting  itself  and  yet  without  dy- 
ing ?  It  would  be  interesting  to  arrange  on  a  long 
inclined  plane  all  the  phenomena  of  anaesthesia, 
narcotization,  sleep,  coma,  suspended  animation, 
fainting,  trance,  catalepsy,  and  dying  in  man;  all 
the  phenomena  of  death-feigning,  animal  hypnosis, 
paralysis,  hibernation,  latent  life,  and  dying  in  ani- 
mals. The  phenomena  of  local  life  are  also  re- 
markable. The  excised  turtle's  heart  may  go  on 
beating  for  many  days  after  the  animal  has  been 
made  into  soup.  We  speak  of  shattering  the  ma- 
chine, but  a  decapitated  turtle  has  been  known  to 
walk  about.  Living,  we  say,  means  a  consensus 
of  all  the  living  parts,  and  yet  a  part  may  be  as 
good  as  the  whole.  In  the  case  of  hundreds  of 
plants,  a  small  fragment  carefully  nursed  will  re- 
grow  the  perfect  organism,  and  the  same  is  true  of 
fairly  complex  animals,  such  as  sponges  and 
polyps  and  worms.  From  one  Turbellarian  worm 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  97 

cut  into  twelve  pieces,  twelve  complete  worms  may 
be  obtained.  We  must  also  recall  that  the  po- 
tentiality of  the  whole  life  lies  in  a  microscopic 
germ-cell,  and  may  be  unrealized  for  years.  A 
complete  inheritance,  rich  in  initiatives,  endowed 
with  the  gains  of  past  ages,  may  be  condensed  in 
a  microscopic  egg-shell  and  in  a  sperm-cell  100,000 
times  smaller.  Moreover,  the  experimental  em- 
bryologists  have  shown  us  that,  unity  as  the  germ- 
cell  is,  a  part  may  be  as  good  as  the  whole.  One 
egg  may  give  rise  to  twins,  or  triplets,  or  quadru- 
plets, or  even  to  many  perfect  embryos.  From 
one-thirty-seventh  of  the  egg  of  a  sea-urchin  Prof. 
Yves  Delage  reared  an  embryo — able  to  live  for 
some  time.  All  this,  and  much  more,  must  be 
borne  in  mind  when  we  think  of  the  character- 
istics of  livingness. 

Although  no  one  is  wise  enough  to  tell  com- 
pletely what  is  meant  by  the  simple  word  alive, 
there  may  be  utility  in  trying  to  state  some  of  the 
characteristic  features  of  living  organisms. 

From  the  Chemist's  Point  of  View. — Looking  at 
organisms  from  the  chemist's  point  of  view,  we  see 
that  the  physical  basis  of  life  invariably  includes 
those  carbon-compounds  known  as  proteids, 
which  are  among  the  most  complex  kinds  of  mat- 
ter in  the  world.  The  component  elements  of 
living  creatures  are  just  the  common  elements 
found  in  their  surroundings,  but  the  make-up  of 


98  The  Bible  of  Nature 

the  organic  compounds  is  very  intricate.  Thus 
the  elements  which  enter  into  the  composition  of 
a  proteid  are  Carbon,  Hydrogen,  Oxygen,  Nitro- 
gen, and  Sulphur,  but  the  chemical  formula  of 
the  proteid  known  as  white  of  egg  is  C^H^- 
N52O6aS2.  The  living  body  contains  such  a  mix- 
ture of  these  complex  compounds  that  we  cannot 
put  our  finger  on  any  one  kind  of  stuff  and  say: 
This  is  protoplasm  or  living  matter  and  nought 
else.  It  may  be  that  there  is  an  essentially  im- 
portant kind  of  substance  which  acts  like  a  ferment 
on  the  complex  cellular  materials  brought  within  its 
sphere  of  influence,  but  it  is  more  probable  that 
there  is  no  one  substance  which  should  be  called 
protoplasm.  It  seems  likely  that  living  matter  is 
a  mixture  (certainly  no  jumble!)  of  proteids  and 
other  highly  complex  substances,  owing  its  virtue 
to  their  cooperative  interaction,  just  as  the  secret 
of  a  firm's  success  may  depend  not  on  any  one 
partner  by  himself,  but  on  their  combination  of 
talents. 

Although  we  cannot  analyze  living  matter,  nor 
thoroughly  interpret  all  the  changes  of  mate- 
rial implied  in  living,  we  can  trace  some  of  the 
chains  of  chemical  sequence.  We  can  follow  the 
food  through  various  transformations  till  it  be- 
comes part  and  parcel  of  the  living  body;  we  can 
catch  the  waste  products  formed  during  activity — 
the  ashes  of  the  living  fire — we  know  that  there  is 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  99 

a  twofold  process  of  building  up  and  breaking 
down,  of  winding  up  and  running  down,  of  con- 
struction and  disruption,  and  we  know  much  in 
regard  to  important  processes  of  fermentation  that 
go  on — much  more,  indeed,  than  we  understand. 
We  are  in  the  position  of  visitors  to  some  great 
manufactory  who  are  permitted  to  see  the  raw 
materials  passing  in,  some  stages  in  their  trans- 
formation, and  the  finished  products  passing  out, 
but  who  are  not  allowed  entrance  to  the  "secret 
room"  where  the  gist  of  the  business  is  hidden. 
When  more  is  known  in  regard  to  the  chemistry 
of  the  living  body,  it  may  be  possible  to  bring  the 
changes  into  better  line  with  those  which  occur 
in  inorganic  things  and  in  the  laboratory  with  or- 
ganic things,  but  meanwhile  we  cannot  redescribe 
the  activity  of  the  living  creature  in  terms  of  chemi- 
cal formulae,1  unless  we  throw  away  the  child  with 

i  It  is  sometimes  asserted  by  careless  writers  that  the 
progress  of  physiology  in  the  last  half-century  has  made  it 
possible  to  redescribe  vital  phenomena  in  terms  of  physics 
and  chemistry. 

"To  me,"  says  Bunge,  a  physiologist  of  undeniable 
standing,  "  the  history  of  physiology  teaches  the  exact  op- 
posite. I  think  the  more  thoroughly  and  conscientiously 
we  endeavor  to  study  biological  problems,  the  more  are 
we  convinced  that  even  those  processes  which  we  have 
already  regarded  as  explicable  by  chemical  and  physical 
laws,  are  in  reality  infinitely  more  complex,  and  at  present 
defy  any  attempt  at  a  mechanical  explanation." 

Dr.  J.  S.  Haldane  goes  even  further:  "  If  we.  look  back 
at  the  phenomena  which  are  capable  of  being  stated,  or 


100  The  Bible  of  Nature 

the  bath,  as  the  Germans  say,  and  ignore  the  most 
salient  fact,  that  all  the  manifold  processes  are 
somehow  correlated  and  centralized  in  a  unified 
behavior  and  in  purpose-like  agency.  Even  the 
simplest  organism  is  a  higher  unity  than  a  whirl- 
pool or  a  nebula  in  being  a  creative  individuality. 
From  the  Physicist's  Point  of  View. — From  the 
physicist's  point  of  view,  the  living  organism  re- 
sembles, as  we  have  already  said,  some  wonder- 
ful kind  of  engine.  It  is  a  material  system  adapted 
to  transform  matter  and  energy,  but  it  differs  from 
any  man-made  machine  in  its  greater  efficiency, 
and  in  this,  that  the  transfer  of  energy  into  it  is 
attended  with  effects  conducive  to  further  transfer 
and  retardative  of  dissipation,  and  in  this,  that  it 
is  a  self-stoking,  self-repairing,  self-preservative, 
self-adjusting,  self-increasing,  self-reproducing  en- 
gine. A  linotype  type-setting  machine,  for  in- 
explained  in  physico-chemical  terms,  we  see  at  once  that 
there  is  nothing  in  them  characteristic  of  life.  .  .  .  We 
are  now  far  more  definitely  aware  of  the  obstacles  to  any 
advance  in  this  (physico-chemical)  direction,  and  there  is 
not  the  slightest  indication  that  they  will  be  removed,  but 
rather  that  with  further  increase  of  knowledge,  and  more 
refined  methods  of  physical  and  chemical  investigation, 
they  will  only  appear  more  and  more  difficult  to  sur- 
mount." These  two  quotations  illustrate  the  modern 
vitalist  position,  in  its  critical,  non-constructive  aspect  at 
least.  See  Essay  by  J.  Arthur  Thomson  and  Patrick 
Geddes  in  "Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith,"  edited  by  J.  E. 
Hand;  Allen,  London,  1905,  p.  333  (pp.  49-80). 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  101 

stance,  is  a  most  marvellous  contrivance,  but,  after 
all,  it  does  not  grow  from  a  piece  of  iron,  though 
there  is  not  much  more  in  it,  and  it  does  not  give 
rise  to  other  linotype  machines.  In  many  ways, 
however,  the  living  creature  is  like  a  machine,  and 
when  we  think  of  the  resemblances  we  should 
always  remember  that  a  machine  is  hardly  a  fair 
sample  of  the  inorganic  world,  since  in  addition 
to  the  forces  of  the  inorganic  world  it  has  inside  of 
it  a  human  thought.  It  is  a  materialized  human 
idea,  just  as  a  picture  is. 

The  time  may  come — who  shall  say — when  we 
shall  see  the  phenomena  of  organic  life  in  better 
line  with  those  of  the  inanimate  world,  but  at 
present  it  is  idle  to  deny  that  the  activities  of  living 
creatures  are  things  apart.  Certain  physical  phe- 
nomena of  surface-tension,  of  diffusion,  of  elastic- 
ity, of  hydrostatics,  of  thermodynamics,  of  elec- 
tricity, are  detected,  but  not  even  the  simplest  vital 
activity  can  be  completely  redescribed  in  terms  of 
physical  formulae.  Even  the  passage  of  digested 
food  from  the  alimentary  canal  to  the  blood-vessels 
is  more  than  ordinary  physical  osmosis;  it  is  modi- 
fied by  the  fact  that  the  cells  are  living.  When  we 
add  up  the  components  revealed  by  chemical  and 
physical  analysis,  they  do  not  amount  to  the  whole 
resultant. 

From  the  Biologist's  Point  of  View. — (a)  Growth. 
Leaving  the  chemical  and  physical  standpoint,  we 


102  The  Bible  of  Nature 

note  from  the  biologist's  point  of  view  that  the  liv- 
ing organism  grows  after  a  fashion  all  its  own,  not 
as  a  rolling  snowball  grows  by  mere  accretion,  but 
by  a  unifying  incorporation;  not  even  as  a  crystal 
grows,  at  the  expense  of  dissolved  material  chem- 
ically the  same  as  itself,  but  at  the  expense  of  ma- 
terial quite  different  from  itself.  The  grass  grows 
at  the  expense  of  air,  water,  and  salts,  which,  with 
the  sun's  aid,  it  lifts  into  the  circle  of  life;  and  at  the 
expense  of  the  grass — after  a  period  of  maternal 
gastric  education — the  foal  grows  into  a  horse.  It 
should  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  growth 
of  crystals  and  the  growth  of  certain  minerals  is  no 
mere  increase  in  bulk,  but  is,  like  organic  growth, 
an  integration,  and  results  in  forms  of  often  star- 
tling beauty. 

(6)  Cyclical  Development.  Another  familiar 
characteristic  of  living  things  is  their  cyclical  de- 
velopment. From  a  microscopic  egg-cell  a  seed 
develops,  from  the  seed  a  seedling,  from  the  seed- 
ling a  beanstalk.  "  By  insensible  steps,  the  plant 
builds  itself  up  into  a  large  and  various  fabric  of 
root,  stem,  leaves,  flowers,  and  fruit,  every  one 
moulded  within  and  without  in  accordance  with 
an  extremely  complex,  but,  at  the  same  time, 
minutely  defined  pattern.  In  each  of  these  com- 
plicated structures,  as  in  their  smallest  constitu- 
ents, there  is  an  immanent  energy,  which,  in 
harmony  with  that  resident  in  all  the  others,  in- 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  103 

cessantly  works  toward  the  maintenance  of  the 
whole  and  efficient  performance  of  the  part  it  has 
to  play  in  the  economy  of  nature.  But  no  sooner 
has  the  edifice,  reared  with  such  exact  elaboration, 
attained  completeness,  than  it  begins  to  crumble. 
By  degrees,  the  plant  withers  and  disappears  from 
view,  leaving  behind  more  or  few  apparently  inert 
and  simple  bodies,  just  like  the  bean  from  which 
it  sprang;  and  like  it  endowed  with  the  potentiality 
of  giving  rise  to  a  similar  cycle  of  manifestations."  * 
It  is  a  "Sisyphsean  process,  in  the  course  of  which 
the  living  and  growing  plant  passes  from  the  rela- 
tive simplicity  and  latent  potentiality  of  the  seed 
to  the  full  epiphany  of  a  highly  differentiated  type, 
thence  to  fall  back  to  simplicity  and  potentiality."5 
So  it  is  among  animals.  The  microscopic  germ- 
cell  divides  and  redivides,  differentiates  and  inte- 
grates into  an  embryo,  the  embryo  may  become 
a  larva,  which  undergoes  metamorphosis  and  be- 
comes adolescent,  or  the  embryo  may  steadily  grow 
into  a  miniature  of  the  mature  organism.  Sooner 
or  later,  in  any  case,  the  adolescent  becomes  the 
adult.  But  when  this  ascent  from  a  vita  minima 
at  the  beginning  has  reached  the  vita  maxima  of 
the  full-grown  organism,  there  begins  to  be  a  re- 
versal of  the  process.  A  limit  of  growth  is  reached, 
reproduction  occurs,  and  reproduction  is  often  the 

1  Huxley,  "Evolution  and  Ethics,"  1893. 

2  Huxley,  loc.  tit. 


104  The  Bible  of  Nature 

beginning  of  death.  The  wear  and  tear  of  daily 
life  is  not  perfectly  compensated  for,  physiological 
arrears  accumulate,  the  creature  gets  into  debt, 
and  there  is  a  quick  or  slow  descent  to  the  vita 
minima  of  senescence,  ending  in  natural  death,  if 
violent  death  has  not  previously  intervened.  We 
can  make  curves  representative  of  the  various  kinds 
of  life-history,  some  with  a  very  rapid  ascent  and 
a  slow  descent,  some  with  a  slow  ascent  and  a  very 
rapid  descent,  some  with  a  long  period  of  maturity, 
some,  as  of  the  May-flies,  with  an  almost  abrupt 
apex.  But  always  there  is  the  same  general  phe- 
nomenon of  cyclical  development.  For  the  life 
of  the  organism  is  very  different  from  the  path  of  a 
rocket  in  the  air,  returning  spent  to  the  level  whence 
it  rose,  very  different  from  the  course  of  the  drops 
of  water  in  a  fountain,  which  rise  to  the  summit, 
sparkle  a  moment  in  the  sunlight,  and  sink  again 
to  earth.  The  fact  of  reproduction  makes  an 
essential  difference.  In  all  but  the  simplest  or- 
ganisms, part  of  the  growing  germ  gives  rise  to  the 
body,  but  part  remains  unaltered  and  forms  the 
germ-cells  for  another  generation.  The  body 
perishes,  but  the  germ-cells  live  on.  Individual 
organisms  are  pendants  that  fall  off  an  immortal 
lineage  of  germ-cells.  Huxley  compared  the  state 
of  affairs  to  what  might  occur  if  a  strawberry  plant 
had  an  endlessly  growing  "sucker"  or  stolon,  root- 
ing here  and  there,  and  forming  transient  straw- 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  105 

berry  plants,  but  itself  always  pushing  on,  un- 
dying. 

Of  all  vital  phenomena,  except  those  of  evolu- 
tion itself,  and  those  wrapped  up  with  intelligence, 
the  processes  of  individual  development  are  the 
most  impressive  in  relation  to  the  question  of  mech- 
anistic and  vitalistic  interpretation.1  The  physi- 
ology of  development  is  still  in  its  infancy,  and  we 
shall  doubtless  be  able  in  the  future  to  understand 
better  how  one  stage  leads  to  another,  but  at  pres- 
ent the  whole  process,  so  obviously  continuous,  is 
mysterious  and  baffling.  We  cannot  picture  how 
the  hereditary  qualities — maternal,  paternal,  and 
ancestral — lie  in  potentia  in  the  microscopic  fertil- 
ized egg-cell;  we  know  very  little  regarding  the 
stimulus  that  sets  the  process  agoing,  though  Pro- 
fessor Loeb's  striking  experiments  on  artificial 
parthenogenesis  are  beginning  to  throw  some  light 
on  the  problem;  we  do  not  understand  the  orderly, 
correlated,  regulated  succession  of  events  which 
leads  from  apparent  simplicity  to  obvious  com- 
plexity. We  do  not  wonder  at  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  writing  in  his  "Religio  Medici":  "Those 
strange  and  mystical  transmigrations  that  I  have 
observed  in  silk-worms  turned  my  philosophy 
into  divinity.  There  is  in  these  works  of  nature, 
which  seem  to  puzzle  reason,  something  divine; 

iSee  Hans  Driesch,  "The  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the 
Organism,"  London,  1908. 


106  The  Bible  of  Nature 

and  hath  more  in  it  than  the  eye  of  a  common 
spectator  doth  discover."  We  do  not  wonder  at 
Dr.  Hans  Driesch,  one  of  the  foremost  and  cer- 
tainly the  most  philosophical  of  experimental  em- 
bryologists,  entitling  one  of  his  books,  "The  Soul 
as  a  Factor  in  Nature." 

(c)  Effective  Response.  Furthermore,  the  living 
organism  is  characterized  by  its  power  of  effective 
response.  There  is  response  also  in  the  inanimate, 
the  bar  of  iron  responds  to  heat,  its  particles  have 
a  quicker  motion,  and  it  expands;  it  responds  like- 
wise to  the  moist  air  and  rusts,  turning  into  oxide 
of  iron.  The  barrel  of  gunpowder  certainly  re- 
sponds to  the  spark,  it  explodes,  destroying  itself 
as  gunpowder  in  so  doing.  But  the  responses  of 
the  living  creature  in  normal  surroundings  are 
effective,  they  are  self-preservative,  they  usually 
make  for  betterment.  There  is  wastage,  of  course ; 
there  can  be  no  activity  without  that;  but  the  or- 
ganism has  a  remarkable  power  of  retaining  its 
integrity,  for  days  or  years.  We  throw  a  piece  of 
potassium  on  the  basin  of  water,  and  it  rushes 
about  fizzing  and  flaring  like  a  thing  possessed, 
but  in  a  minute  all  its  activity  is  over.  It  goes  out. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  watch  the  movements  of  the 
whirligig  beetle  on  the  pool;  it  darts  like  a  little 
water-sprite  here,  there,  and  everywhere  over  the 
surface,  but,  unlike  the  potassium  pill,  it  does  not 
go  out.  When  it  is  tired,  it  takes  a  rest,  and  so  it 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  107 

goes  on  for  weeks  and  months,  and,  if  it  gets  big 
rests,  for  years.  When  its  energies  flag,  it  feeds, 
and  recuperates  itself.  When  danger  threatens, 
it  seeks  its  hiding-place.  Its  life  is  full  of  effective 
responses,  and  not  the  least  important  or  marvel- 
lous is  the  power  of  taking  a  rest. 

(d)  Unified  Behavior.  This  naturally  leads  on 
to  a  recognition  of  the  general  fact  that  the  living 
creature  has  a  unified  activity,  which  is  usually 
worthy  of  being  called  behavior.  In  his  "Cray- 
fish"— one  of  the  best  introductions  to  the  study  of 
zoology — Huxley  compared  the  organism  to  a 
whirlpool,  such  as  one  may  see  below  the  Niagara 
Falls,  which  is  always  changing  and  yet  always  re- 
maining the  same.  Amid  ceaseless  flux  it  retains 
a  remarkable  sameness.  And  truly,  the  living 
organism  is  like  a  whirlpool — a  system  within  a 
system;  streams  of  matter  and  energy  are  continu- 
ally passing  in  and  as  continually  passing  out;  and 
yet  the  unity  persists.  But  the  comparison  does 
not  sufficiently  bring  out  what  is  so  essentially 
characteristic  of  the  organism,  that  all  its  changes 
are  correlated  in  such  a  way  that  persistent  unified 
behavior  is  in  most  cases  possible. 

Our  familiarity  with  plant  organisms  may  raise 
a  difficulty,  for  their  whole  life  seems  rounded  with 
a  sleep.  Plants  are  continually  converting  the 
kinetic  energy  of  the  sunlight  into  the  potential 
energy  of  complex  stored  products,  while  animals 


108  The  Bible  of  Nature 

characteristically  change  potential  energy  into 
kinetic  energy  in  locomotion  and  external  work. 
Plants  show  a  relative  preponderance  of  construc- 
tive, upbuilding  processes,  and  are  hampered  by 
the  abundance  of  their  riches.  From  another 
point  of  view,  they  are  inhibited  by  their  own  in- 
ternal waste-products,  and  slumber  like  hibernat- 
ing animals,  or  like  a  fire  too  carefully  banked  up, 
half-smothered  in  its  own  ashes.  But  we  prob- 
ably under-appreciate  the  vegetative  life.  Al- 
though the  lilies  of  the  field  neither  toil  nor  spin, 
they  are  intensely  active  internally.  Although 
plants  do  not  walk  about,  many  of  them  swim 
about.  Young  shoots  move  round  in  leisurely 
circles;  the  rootlets  twist  away  from  sharp  edges, 
and  on  a  piece  of  smoked  glass  they  may  be  got 
to  keep  a  diary  of  their  daily  movements;  twining 
stems  and  tendrils  bend  and  bow  to  the  different 
points  of  the  compass  as  they  climb;  leaves  rise 
and  sink,  flowers  open  and  close  with  the  growing 
and  waning  light  of  day.  In  a  large  number  of 
plants  undeniable  sense-organs  are  now  known. 
Tendrils  twine  around  the  lightest  threads,  the 
leaves  of  the  sensitive  plant  respond  to  a  gentle 
touch,  the  tentacles  of  the  sundew,  the  hairs  of  the 
fly-trap,  the  stamens  of  the  rock-rose,  the  stigma 
of  the  musk,  compare  well  with  the  sensitive  and 
motile  organs  of  many  animals.  They  have  some 
power,  too,  of  profiting  by  experience.  It  is  not 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  109 

unjustifiable  to  speak  of  the  Venus  Fly-trap  as 
having  a  short  memory. 

We  used  to  think,  as  many  still  think,  of  the  ac- 
tivities of  the  simplest  animals  or  Protozoa,  in  a 
somewhat  dull  way,  translating  them  all  into  mere 
reflexes  or  tropisms.  And  no  doubt  there  are  re^ 
flexes  or  tropisms,  and  this  mode  of  interpretation 
must  be  pushed  as  far  as  it  will  go.  But  not 
further.  For  the  careful  work  of  Jennings,  for 
instance,  has  shown  us  that  these  humble  creatures 
sometimes  exhibit  what  may  be  called  the  first 
hints  of  mind,  at  any  rate,  a  pursuance  of  the  meth- 
od of  trial  and  error.  There  is  a  selective  be- 
havior, such  as  we  are  ourselves  continually  ex- 
hibiting. The  meaning  of  the  term  selective 
behavior  may  be  illustrated  by  the  story  of  a  dog 
which  was  asked  to  carry  a  walking-stick  with  a 
crooked  handle  through  a  fence  with  close  up- 
right bars.  It  took  the  stick  by  the  middle  and 
jammed ;  it  tried  again,  but  began  at  the  wrong  end 
of  the  stick  and  jammed  again.  Finally,  it  gripped 
the  handle  in  its  mouth  and  ran  triumphantly 
through.  Similarly,  Darwin  found  that  the  earth- 
worms dealt  in  an  effective  way  with  the  bifoliar 
spurs  of  the  Scotch  fir,  and  even  with  strange  leaves 
of  which  they  could  have  had  no  experience. 
Similarly,  Jennings  has  found  that  some  infuso- 
rians  try  one  reaction  after  another,  and  select  the 
one  which  is  fit. 


110  The  Bible  of  Nature 

There  seems  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  the  view 
that  many  of  the  activities  in  animals  which  we 
call  mere  reflexes,  are,  as  it  were,  the  degraded 
stages  of  activities  which  were  to  begin  with  self- 
determined  or  purposive — profitably  degraded,  for 
the  agent  thus  becomes  freer  to  solve  new  prob- 
lems. In  so  saying,  however,  we  need  not  re- 
turn to  the  old  and  probably  quite  erroneous 
theory  that  "instincts"  arose  from  "lapsed  in- 
telligence," which  is  a  separate  question.  In  any 
case  we  may  agree  that  even  simple  actions  of 
simple  creatures  illustrate  what  we  must  call  uni- 
fied behavior,  which  is  effective  and  adaptive,  di- 
rected by  the  creature  itself.  Even  spermatozoa 
always  swim  against  the  stream.  A  self-acting, 
self-regulating,  self-adjusting,  self-preserving  ma- 
chine is  no  longer  a  machine.  As  a  unity  the  or- 
ganism lives,  as  a  unity  it  develops,  as  a  unity  it 
evolves. 

We  may  refer  here  to  the  important  discussion 
of  the  whole  subject  of  organisms  and  their  evo- 
lution, which  is  given  by  Professor  Bergson  in  his 
illuminating  book,  "L'Evolution  Creatrice."  He 
points  out  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  we  boggle 
so  much  over  the  puzzle  of  life  is  that  our  intelli- 
gence is  most  at  home  among  mechanical  things — 
solids  and  their  movements.  It  was  trained  in  this 
school  long  before  there  was  any  philosophical 
biology.  The  organism  bursts  the  categories  of 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  111 

"mechanical  causality"  and  the  like  which  we  try 
to  force  upon  it. 

Our  own  mental  experience,  which  we  know 
best,  means  continual  change;  from  day  to  day  we 
ripe  and  ripe;  we  are  continually  recreating  our- 
selves, artists  of  our  own  life.  So  the  organism 
has  true  experience  and  history,  which  a  stone 
never  has;  there  is  persistence  in  spite  of  ceaseless 
change;  there  is  a  continual  registration  of  the  re- 
sults of  time,  and  there  is  continual  creation.  The 
organism's  creativeness  is  incalculable,  unpredict- 
able; it  uses  time  so  as  to  profit  by  experience;  it  is 
continually  making  itself  afresh.  In  its  essential 
features  it  thus  transcends  mechanical  description. 

Origin  of  Organisms  upon  the  Earth. — No  one 
doubts  that  at  some  uncertain,  but  inconceivably 
distant  date,  living  creatures  appeared  upon  the 
earth,  which  had  previously  been  tenantless. 
During  the  early  phases  of  the  earth's  history, 
before  it  cooled  and  consolidated,  the  conditions 
were  quite  impossible  for  such  organisms  as  we 
know,  and  there  is  no  use  talking  about  any  other. 
The  question  is:  What  was  the  manner  of  the  be- 
coming of  living  creatures  upon  the  earth;  and 
the  answer  is  that  we  do  not  know.  Our  inquiry 
might  close  at  this  point,  were  it  not  that  a  num- 
ber of  less  truthful  answers  have  been  given,  were 
it  not  that  a  discussion  of  the  subject  may  enable 
us  to  bring  into  greater  prominence  the  essential 


112  The  Bible  of  Nature 

insignia  of  livingness.  Some  apprehension  or 
appreciation  of  these  always  colors  our  picture  of 
Nature,  though  the  dominant  tone  always  depends 
on  what  we  make  of  man  himself.  Let  us  first 
take  a  brief  historical  survey.  Perhaps  it  is  well  to 
speak  of  the  problem  as  the  origin  of  living  organ- 
isms, rather  than  of  life.  Life  is  an  ambiguous 
and  mysterious  term.  We  do  not  know  what  life 
in  its  essence  really  implies.  We  may  be  begging 
the  question  in  asking  how  " life"  began.  Life  may 
be  a  particular  mode  of  motion  as  old  as  other 
modes  of  motion — such  as  heat  or  elasticity  or 
matter.  Or  "life"  may  be  in  its  essence  insepa- 
rable from  what  we  call  "spirit."  Therefore,  to 
inquire  into  the  origin  of  life  may  be  like  inquiring 
into  the  origin  of  motion  or  the  origin  of  conscious- 
ness. But  it  is  still  too  soon  to  say  so. 

Various  Suggestions. — The  first  possible  answer 
is  that  living  organisms  began  after  a  fashion 
which  we  can  never  form  any  scientific  conception 
of,  that  the  origin  of  life  is  for  science  a  quite  in- 
soluble problem.  This  answer  saves  a  lot  of 
trouble,  but  the  objection  to  it  is  that  it  is  prema- 
turely dogmatic,  closing  the  door  on  legitimate 
scientific  inquiry. 

Secondly,  Preyer  and  others  have  suggested 
that  germs  of  life,  confessedly  unlike  any  we  now 
know,  may  have  existed  from  the  beginning  even 
in  nebulous  masses.  It  was  not,  indeed,  the  pro- 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  113 

toplasm  we  know  that  was  encradled  in  the  fire- 
mist;  it  was  a  kind  of  movement,  a  particular  dance 
of  corpuscles,  different  in  its  measures  from  in- 
organic dances.  But  there  does  not  seem  much 
utility  in  discussing  a  hypothetical  kind  of  organ- 
ism which  could  live  in  nebulae;  our  conception 
of  organic  life  must  be  based  on  the  organisms 
we  know.  It  is  interesting,  however,  to  note  that 
Preyer  strongly  opposed  the  view  that  organic  sub- 
stance could  arise  or  could  have  arisen  from  in- 
organic substance;  the  reverse  supposition  seemed 
to  him  more  tenable. 

As  a  corollary  of  the  second  answer  we  may 
notice  the  view  that  organisms  came  to  the  earth 
from  elsewhere. 

As  far  back  as  1865,  H.  E.  Richter  started  the 
idea  that  germs  of  life  are  continually  being  thrown 
off  from  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  that  some  of 
these  found  lodgment  on  the  earth,  when  it  was 
ready  for  them.  For  him,  as  for  Preyer,  it  was 
impossible  to  think  of  life  beginning;  his  dictum 
was,  Omne  vivum  ab  ceternitate  e  cellida.  To 
Helmholtz  (1884)  and  to  Sir  William  Thomson 
(Lord  Kelvin)  the  same  idea  occurred,  that  germs 
of  life  may  have  come  to  the  earth  embosomed 
in  meteorites.  "I  cannot  contend,"  Helmholtz 
said,  "  against  one  who  would  regard  this  hypoth- 
esis as  highly  or  wholly  improbable.  But  it 
appears  to  me  to  be  a  wholly  correct  scientific  pro- 


114  The  Bible  of  Nature 

cedure,  when  all  our  endeavors  to  produce  organ- 
isms out  of  lifeless  substance  are  thwarted,  to 
question  whether,  after  all,  life  has  ever  arisen, 
whether  it  may  not  be  even  as  old  as  matter,  and 
whether  its  germs,  passed  from  one  world  to  an- 
other, may  not  have  developed  where  they  found 
favorable  soil.  .  .  .  The  true  alternative  is  evident: 
organic  life  has  either  begun  to  exist  at  some  one 
time,  or  has  existed  from  eternity."  On  the  other 
hand,  we  may  note  that  the  word  " eternal"  is 
somewhat  irrelevant  in  scientific  discourse,  that 
the  notion  of  such  complex  substances  as  proteids 
(essentially  involved  in  every  organism  we  know) 
being  primitive,  is  quite  against  the  tenor  of  mod- 
ern theories  of  inorganic  evolution;  and  that, 
though  we  cannot  deny  the  possibility,  it  is  difficult 
to  conceive  of  anything  like  the  protoplasm  we 
know  surviving  transport  in  a  meteorite  through 
the  intense  cold  in  space  and  through  intense  heat 
when  passing  through  our  atmosphere.  The 
milder  form  of  the  hypothesis  associated  with  the 
name  of  Lord  Kelvin  was  simply  one  of  transport; 
he  wisely  said  nothing  about  "eternal  cells"  or 
any  such  thing;  he  simply  shifted  the  responsi- 
bility of  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  living  organ- 
isms off  the  shoulders  of  our  planet. 

Spontaneous  Generation. — Apart  from  the  aban- 
donment of  the  problem  as  scientifically  insoluble 
— apart,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  view  that  living 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  115 

creatures  began  to  be  in  some  way  which  we  can- 
not hope  to  formulate  in  terms  of  the  scientific 
"universe  of  discourse,"  we  have  the  suggestions 
(a)  that  the  physical  basis  of  life  is  as  old  as  the 
cosmos,  and  (6)  that  germs  of  organisms  may  have 
come  from  elsewhere  to  our  earth.  There  is  but 
one  other  possible  view,  namely,  that  what  we  call 
living  evolved  in  Nature's  laboratory  from  what 
we  call  not-living — a  view  to  which  the  trend  of 
evolutionist  thinking  certainly  attracts  us.  There 
are  few  living  biologists1  who  doubt  the  present 
universality  of  the  induction  from  all  sufficiently 
careful  experiment  and  observation — omne  vivum 
e  vivo;  but  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  say  that 
abiogenesis  may  not  have  occurred  in  the  past  or 
may  not  occur  in  the  future.  The  dictum  omne 
vivum  e  vivo  is  a  statement  of  empirical  fact;  it  is 
not  a  dogmatic  closing  of  the  question. 

It  is  perhaps  useful,  at  this  stage,  to  remember 
that  the  idea  of  the  origin  of  the  living  from  the 
not  living  is  very  old,  and  has  persisted  for  at  least 
twenty  centuries.  A  belief  in  spontaneous  gen- 
eration was  held  at  dates  as  widely  separated  as 
are  suggested  by  the  names  of  Aristotle,  Augustine, 
Lucretius,  Luther,  Francis  Bacon,  and  Harvey. 

1  Dr.  Bastian  is  practically  alone  in  believing  that  creat- 
ures like  Infusorians  and  Amcebse  (highly  complex  indi- 
vidualities in  their  own  way)  can  now  arise  from  not- 
living  material. 


116  The  Bible  of  Nature 

The  belief  rested  on  misinterpretations  not  un- 
natural at  times  when  microbes  were  unknown,  or 
when  the  life-histories  of  common  parasites  were 
very  dimly  discerned,  or  when  no  one  dreamed 
of  the  minuteness  and  ready  transportability  of 
the  germs  of  even  worms.  It  was  supposed  that 
thistles  arose  de  novo  from  the  dust,  that  bees 
sprang  from  dead  oxen,  that  frogs  were  engendered 
from  the  mud. 

But  though  many  thoughtful  biologists,  such  as 
Huxley  and  Spencer,  Nageli  and  Haeckel,  have 
accepted  the  hypothesis  that  living  organisms  of 
a  very  simple  sort  were  originally  evolved  from 
not-living  material,  they  have  done  so  rather  in 
their  faith  in  a  continuous  natural  evolution,  than 
from  any  apprehension  of  the  possible  sequences 
which  might  lead  up  to  such  a  remarkable  result. 
The  hypothesis  of  abiogenesis  may  be  suggested 
on  a  priori  grounds,  but  few  have  ventured  to 
offer  any  concrete  indication  of  how  the  process 
might  conceivably  come  about.  To  postulate 
abiogenesis  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  course  betrays 
an  extraordinarily  easy-going  scientific  mood. 

Some  Concrete  Suggestions. — One  of  the  few  con- 
crete suggestions  is  due  to  the  physiologist  Pfluger 
(1875),  whose  views  are  clearly  summarized  in 
Verworn's  "General  Physiology."  Pfluger  sug- 
gested that  it  is  the  cyanogen  radical  (CN)  which 
gives  the  " living"  proteid  molecule  its  character- 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  117 

istic  properties  of  self-decomposition  and  recon- 
struction. He  indicated  the  similarities  between 
cyanic  acid  (HCNO) — a  product  of  the  oxidation 
of  cyanogen — and  proteid  material,  which  is  ad- 
mitted to  be  an  essential  part,  at  least,  of  all  living 
matter.  "This  similarity  is  so  great,"  he  said, 
"that  I  might  term  cyanic  acid  a  half-living  mole- 
cule." As  cyanogen  and  its  compounds  arise  in 
an  incandescent  heat  when  the  necessary  nitrog- 
enous compounds  are  present,  they  may  have 
been  formed  when  the  earth  was  still  an  incan- 
descent ball.  "If  now  we  consider  the  immeasu- 
rably long  time  during  which  the  cooling  of  the 
earth's  surface  dragged  itself  slowly  along,  cyan- 
ogen and  the  compounds  that  contain  cyano- 
gen- and  hydrocarbon-substances  had  time  and 
opportunity  to  indulge  extensively  in  their  great 
tendency  toward  transformation  and  polymeriza- 
tion, and  to  pass  over  with  the  aid  of  oxygen,  and 
later  of  water  and  salts,  into  that  self-destructive 
proteid,  living  matter."1 

Verworn  adopts  and  elaborates  this  suggestion: 
Compounds  of  cyanogen  were  formed  while  the 
earth  was  still  incandescent;  with  their  property 
of  ready  decomposition  they  were  forced  into  cor- 
relation with  various  other  compounds  likewise 
due  to  the  great  heat;  when  water  was  precipitated 

J  Quoted  by  Verworn,  "General  Physiology"  (1899), 
p.  307. 


118  The  Bible  of  Nature 

as  liquid  upon  the  earth  these  compounds  entered 
into  chemical  relations  with  the  water  and  its 
dissolved  salts  and  gases,  and  thus  originated  ex- 
tremely labile,  very  simple,  undifferentiated  living 
substance. 

Professor  E.  Ray  Lankester,  in  his  article, 
"Protozoa,"  in  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica," 
makes  the  suggestion,  "that  a  vast  amount  of  al- 
buminoids and  other  such  compounds  had  been 
brought  into  existence  by  those  processes  which 
culminated  in  the  development  of  the  first  proto- 
plasm, and  it  seems  therefore  likely  enough  that 
the  first  protoplasm  fed  upon  these  antecedent 
steps  in  its  own  evolution." 

Dr.  H.  Charlton  Bastian  suggests,  in  regard  to 
the  first  origin  of  living  matter  upon  the  earth,  that 
the  nitrate  of  ammonia  which  is  known  to  be  pro- 
duced in  the  air  during  thunder-storms,  and  is  dis- 
covered in  the  thunder-shower,  may  have  played 
an  important  part  in  the  mixture  of  ingredients 
from  which  the  hypothetical  natural  synthesis  of 
living  matter  was  effected. 

Mr.  J.  Butler  Burke  postulates  original  vital 
units  or  "bio-elements,"  which  " may  have  existed 
throughout  the  universe  for  an  almost  indefinite 
time,"  which  are  probably  "elements  possessing 
many  of  the  chemical  properties  of  carbon  and  the 
radio-active  properties  of  the  more  unstable  ele- 
ments," and  which,  by  interacting  on  otherwise 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  119 

present  carbon-compounds,  probably  gave  rise 
to  cellular  life  as  we  know  it  to-day. 

By  allowing  quantities  of  radium  salt  to  act  on 
sterilized  bouillon,  Mr.  J.  Butler  Burke  obtained 
transient  little  bodies  which  he  called  "  radiobes," 
which  seemed  to  him  on  the  border-line  between 
the  animate  and  the  inanimate.  Mr.  Burke  did 
not  claim,  however,  to  have  effected  "  spontaneous 
generation."  To  expect  to  make  a  full-blown 
bacillus  at  the  present  day,  he  says,  would  not  be 
less  absurd  than  to  try  to  manufacture  a  man. 
He  admitted  that  his  "radiobes,"  which  are  solu- 
ble in  water,  are  "altogether  outside  the  beaten 
track  of  living  things,"  though  he  maintained  that 
they  have  n — 1  of  the  n  properties  of  the  living  or- 
ganism. "That  little  more  and  how  much  it  is, 
That  little  less  and  what  worlds  away."  It  should 
be  remembered,  too,  that  this  investigator  postu- 
lates a  potential  vitality,  and  indeed  spirituality,  in 
all  matter.  Matter,  he  says,  is  ultimately  mind- 
stuff,  and  the  atoms  are  nothing  more  than  ideas. 

Difficulty  of  the  Problem. — It  must  be  admitted 
that,  in  spite  of  these  and  other  concrete  sugges- 
tions, we  are  still  far  from  being  able  to  imagine 
how  living  matter  could  arise  from  not-living 
matter.  But  we  must  remember  that  many  things 
happen  which  we  do  not  understand.  Two  sub- 
stances combine  to  form  a  new  substance  with 
quite  different  properties,  which  are  doubtless  due 


120  The  Bible  of  Nature 

to  what  the  component  parts  have  contributed, 
though  we  do  not  know  how.  At  the  same  time 
in  postulating  possible  processes  which  may  have 
occurred  long  ago  in  Nature's  laboratory,  it  is  al- 
ways desirable  that  we  should  be  able  to  back 
these  up  with  evidence  of  analogous  processes  now 
occurring  in  Nature — the  usual  mode  of  argument 
in  evolutionist  discourse — but  these  analogues  are 
not  forthcoming  at  present.  It  is  usual  to  refer 
to  the  achievements  of  the  synthetic  chemist,  who 
can  now  manufacture  artificially  such  natural 
organic  products  as  urea,  alcohol,  grape  sugar, 
indigo,  oxalic  acid,  tartaric  acid,  salicylic  acid, 
and  caffeine.  But  four  facts  should  be  borne  in 
mind:  (1)  the  directive  agency  of  the  intelligent 
chemist  is  an  essential  factor  in  these  syntheses; 

(2)  no  one  supposes  that  a  living  organism  makes 
its  organic  compounds  in  the  way  in  which  many 
of  these  can  be  made  in  the  chemical  laboratory; 

(3)  no  one  has  yet  come  near  the  artificial  synthe- 
sis of  proteids,  which  are  the  most  characteristic 
substances  in  living  matter;  and  (4)  there  is  a  great 
gap  between  making  organic  matter  and  making 
an  organism.    When  Kekule  spoke  of  looking  for- 
ward to  the  time  when  we  shall  "  build  up  the  for- 
mative elements  of  living  organisms  "  in  the  labo- 
ratory, he  probably  had  the  distinction  between  the 
organism  and  its  several  component  substances 
quite  clearly  in  mind. 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  121 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  comparing  what  man  can 
do  in  the  way  of  evolving  domesticated  animals 
and  cultivated  plants  with  what  we  believe  Nature 
has  done  in  the  distant  past.  Why,  then,  should 
we  not  argue  from  what  the  intelligent  chemist  can 
do  in  the  way  of  evolving  carbon-compounds  to 
what  Nature  may  have  done  before  there  was  any- 
thing animate?  There  is  this  difference,  among 
others,  in  the  two  cases,  that  in  the  former  we  can 
actually  observe  the  operation  of  natural  selection 
which  in  Nature  takes  the  place  of  the  breeder, 
while  we  are  at  a  loss  to  suggest  what,  in  Na- 
ture's as  yet  very  hypothetical  laboratory  of 
chemical  synthesis,  could  take  the  place  of  the 
directive  chemist. 

Thus  Professor  F.  R.  Japp,  following  Pasteur, 
pointed  out  in  a  memorable  British  Association 
address  that  natural  organic  compounds  are 
"  optically  active"  (a  characteristic  property  which 
cannot  be  here  discussed),  that  artificially  prepared 
organic  compounds  are  primarily  "optically  in- 
active," that  by  a  selective  process  the  intelligent 
operator  can  obtain  the  former  from  the  latter, 
but  ...  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  any  mechan- 
ism in  nature  which  could  effect  this.  "No 
fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms,  even  with  all  eter- 
nity for  them  to  clash  and  combine  in,  could  com- 
pass this  feat  of  the  formation  of  the  first  optically 
active  organic  compound."  "The  chance  syn- 


122  The  Bible  of  Nature 

thesis  of  the  simplest  optically  active  compound 
from  inorganic  materials  is  absolutely  incon- 
ceivable." 

Not  content,  however,  with  indicating  the  diffi- 
culty which  the  believer  in  abiogenesis  has  here 
to  face,  Professor  Japp  went  on  to  say — perhaps, 
in  so  doing,  leaving  the  rigidly  scientific  position : 
"I  see  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that,  at  the 
moment  when  life  first  arose,  a  directive  force  came 
into  play — a  force  of  precisely  the  same  character 
as  that  which  enables  the  intelligent  operator,  by 
the  exercise  of  his  will,  to  select  out  one  crystallized 
enantiomorph  and  reject  its  asymmetric  opposite." 
After  prolonged  discussion,  and  in  view  of  various 
suggestions  of  possible  origins,  he  wrote : "  Although 
I  no  longer  venture  to  speak  of  the  inconceivability 
of  any  mechanical  explanation  of  the  production 
of  single  optically  active  compounds  asymmetric  al- 
ways in  the  same  sense,  I  am  as  convinced  as  ever 
of  the  enormous  improbability  of  any  such  produc- 
tion under  chance  conditions." 

Apart,  then,  from  the  fact  that  the  synthesis  of 
proteids  seems  still  far  off,  apart  also  from  the 
fact  that  there  is  a  great  gap  between  a  drop  of 
proteid  and  the  simplest  organism,  we  have  per- 
haps said  enough  to  show  that  the  hypothesis  of 
abiogenesis  is  not  to  be  held  with  an  easy  mind,  at- 
tracted as  we  may  be  to  it  by  the  general  evolu- 
tionist argument. 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  123 

Apartness  of  Living  Creatures. — In  thinking  over 
this  difficult  question  there  are  two  cautions  which 
should  be  borne  in  mind.  We  must  not  exag- 
gerate the  apartness  of  the  animate  from  the  in- 
animate, nor  must  we  depreciate  it.  On  the  one 
hand,  we  must  recognize  that  modern  progress  in 
chemistry  and  physics,  has  given  us  a  much  more 
"vital"  conception  of  what  has  been  libelled  as 
"dead  matter";  we  must  not  belittle  the  powers  of 
growth  and  regrowth  which  we  observe  in  crystals, 
the  series  of  form-changes  through  which  many 
inorganic  things,  even  drops  of  water,  may  pass; 
the  behavior  of  ferments;  the  intricate  internal  ac- 
tivity of  even  the  dust.  When  we  consider,  too, 
such  phenomena  as  "latent  life,"  and  "local  life," 
and  the  relatively  great  simplicity  of  many  forms 
and  kinds  of  life,  we  do  not  find  it  easy  to  discover 
absolute,  universal,  and  invariable  criteria  to  dis- 
tinguish between  animate  and  inanimate  systems, 
or  between  the  quick  and  the  dead.  To  some 
extent,  also,  the  artificial  synthesis  of  complex  or- 
ganic compounds,  and  the  ingenious  construction 
of  "artificial  cells"  which  closely  mimic  the  struc- 
ture of  living  cells,  though  no  one  supposes  that 
they  are  in  the  faintest  degree  "alive,"  serve  to 
lessen  the  gap  which  seems  at  first  so  wide. 

There  is  certainly  some  interest  in  the  artificial 
foam-cells  of  Quincke  and  Biitschli,  in  Dubois' 
"vacuolids"  or  "eobes,"  in  Butler  Burke's  "radi- 


124  The  Bible  of  Nature 

obes,"  in  Sir  William  Ramsay's  Helium  cells,  in 
Lehmann's  liquid  crystals,  and  in  the  wonderful 
crystallization  phenomena  described  by  von 
Schron.  One  of  the  latest  of  the  courageous  es- 
says bearing  on  experimental  biogenesis  (M.  Kuck- 
uck's  "Losung  des  Problems  der  Urzeugung," 
1907),  points  out  that  if  we  add  Barium  chloride, 
or  a  salt  of  Radium,  or  a  salt  of  Nuclein,  to  a  gela- 
tiner  peptone  -  asparagin  -  glycerine  -sea- water  mix- 
ture, we  may  get  little  corpuscles  which  feed,  grow, 
segment,  move,  and,  in  fact,  do  most  things  except 
live. 

It  is  gratuitous  to  suppose  that  experiments 
along  these  lines  may  not  help  us  to  get  on  the  track 
of  Nature's  synthesis,  or  that  they  may  not  have 
important  practical  results.  It  should  be  re- 
membered too  that  while  we  have  no  experimental 
reason  for  saying  that  we  can  make  an  organism 
artificially,  we  have  no  experimental  reason  for 
saying  that  we  cannot.  We  have  no  way  of  proving 
the  impossibility  of  an  occurrence  that  is  not  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  verdict  of  common 
sense  and  exact  science  alike  that  living  creatures 
stand  apart  from  inanimate  systems.  In  the  in- 
animate world  we  find  order,  but  no  self-adjusting 
adaptation;  response  to  stimulus,  but  no  effective 
self-preservative  response;  struggle  but  no  strug- 
gle for  existence;  change  but  no  creative  agency. 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  125 

The  living  creature  feeds  and  grows;  it  undergoes 
ceaseless  change,  yet  has  a  marvellous  power  of  re- 
taining its  integrity;  it  is  not  merely  a  self-stoking, 
self-repairing  engine,  but  a  self-reproducing  en- 
gine; it  has  a  self-regulative  development;  it  gives 
effective  response  to  external  stimuli;  it  profits  by 
experience;  it  uses  time;  it  coordinates  its  activ- 
ities into  unified  behavior,  it  may  be  into  intelligent 
deeds  and  rational  conduct.  Allowing  for  the 
gradual  realization  of  potentialities  in  the  course 
of  evolution,  we  cannot  but  feel  that  if  the  living 
emerged  from  the  not-living,  then  our  appreciation 
of  not-living  matter  must  be  greatly  enhanced. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  we  cannot  at  present 
redescribe  any  vital  behavior  in  terms  of  physical 
and  chemical  categories,  and  the  secret  of  the  or- 
ganism has  to  be  admitted  as  such  whether  we  ad- 
vance to  a  vitalistic  statement  of  it  or  not.  In 
vitalistic  doctrine  we  must  distinguish  two  posi- 
tions, first,  the  negative  statement,  which  seems  at 
present  safe,  that  no  vital  activity  can  be  com- 
pletely redescribed  in  terms  of  physics  and  chem- 
istry, and  second,  the  positive  statement,  which  is 
open  to  various  objections,  that  there  is  in  the 
living  creature  some  "vital  principle"  or  "En- 
telechy." 

If  an  Organism  Could  be  Made  Artificially,  What 
Then? — Finally,  let  us  suppose  that  some  bold  ex- 
perimenter in  the  borderland  between  chemistry 


126  The  Bible  of  Nature 

and  biology,  a  man  like  Professor  Jacques  Loeb, 
is  successful  this  year  or  next  year  in  making,  not 
merely  a  corpuscle  of  proteid,  but  a  little  living 
thing,  by  some  ingenious  synthesis.  What  then  ? 
(a)  It  is  quite  likely  that  the  steps  leading  to 
this  hypothetical  achievement  might  be  as  unlike 
those  which,  on  the  hypothesis  of  abiogenesis,  once 
occurred  in  Nature's  laboratory,  as  the  artificial 
synthesis  of,  say,  oxalic  acid  is  unlike  what  takes 
place  in  the  sorrel  in  the  wood.  (6)  At  present 
we  cannot  assert  that  the  laws  of  the  movements 
of  organic  corpuscles  can  be  deduced  from  the 
laws  of  motion  of  not-living  corpuscles — continu- 
ous as  we  may  believe  cosmic  evolution  to  have 
been — and  the  artificial  production  of  a  living 
creature  would  not  enable  us  to  make  this  asser- 
tion. What  simplification  of  descriptive  formulae 
the  future  has  in  store  for  us  no  one  can  predict. 
We  may  have  to  simplify  the  conceptual  formulae 
which  we  use  in  describing  animate  behavior,  and 
we  may  have  to  modify  the  conceptual  formulae 
which  we  use  in  describing  inanimate  sequences, 
but  at  present  the  two  sets  of  formulae  remain  dis- 
tinct, and  they  would  so  remain  even  if  a  little  liv- 
ing creature  were  manufactured  to-morrow,  (c)  If 
we  discovered  a  method  of  artificially  producing 
an  organism,  as  Loeb  has  discovered  a  method 
of  inducing  an  egg  to  develop  without  fertilization, 
it  would  render  the  hypothesis  of  abiogenesis  more 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  127 

credible.  We  would  then  know,  what  no  natural- 
ist at  present  knows,  however  strongly  he  may  be- 
lieve it,  that  what  we  call  not-living  has  in  it  the 
potentiality  of  giving  origin  to  what  we  call  living. 
But  the  hypothetical  discovery  would  in  no  way 
affect  the  dignity  and  value  of  living  creatures,  or 
of  our  own  life.  The  whole  world  would  be  more 
continuous  and  vital,  (d)  If  it  came  about  that 
we  were  able  to  bring  materials  and  energies  to- 
gether in  such  a  way  that  living  creatures  of  a  sim- 
ple sort  resulted,  we  should  still  have  to  remember 
that  we  had  acted  as  directive  agents  in  the  syn- 
thesis, (e)  Finally,  if  the  experiment  succeeded, 
we  should  not  have  arrived  at  any  explanation  of 
life.  We  should  be  able  to  say  that,  'given  certain 
antecedent  conditions,  certain  consequences  en- 
sue, but  we  should  still  be  unable  to  answer  the 
question  how  or  why.  We  should  have  a  genetic 
description  of  an  occurrence,  but  no  explanation 
of  it.  For  that  is  what  science  never  supplies.1 

In  conclusion,  to  o^uote  Principal  Lloyd  Morgan, 
"Those  who  would  concentrate  the  mystery  of  ex- 
istence on  the  pin-point  of  thev  genesis  of  proto- 

1  The  intellectual  outcome  of  the  long-drawn-out  discus- 
sion on  the  origin  of  living  organisms  is  certainly  disap- 
pointing, but  it  is  interesting  to  notice  that  it  has  been 
richly  rewarded  in  practice.  It  has  led  to  discoveries  in 
the  preservation  and  improvement  of  food,  to  an  entirely 
new  view  of  parasites,  to  the  use  of  antiseptics,  and  to  the 
cure  of  many  diseases. 


128  The  Bible  of  Nature 

plasm,  do  violence  alike  to  philosophy  and  to  re- 
ligion. Those  who  would  single  out  from  among 
the  multitudinous  differentiations  of  an  evolving 
universe  this  alone  for  special  interposition,  would 
seem  to  do  little  honor  to  the  Divinity  they  profess 
to  serve.  Theodore  Parker  gave  expression  to  a 
broader  and  more  reverent  theology  when  he  said : 
"The  universe,  broad  and  deep  and  high,  is  a 
handful  of  dust  which  God  enchants.  He  is  the 
mysterious  magic  which  possesses,"  not  proto- 
plasm merely,  but  "the  world." 

This  is  all  very  well,  some  one  may  say,  but  are 
you  not  at  least  leading  us  to  look  with  some  favor 
on  what  is  a  materialistic  view  of  life  ?  If  this  be 
the  impression  left,  then  our  statement  has  failed 
of  its  purpose.  Materialism  is  the  theory  that 
there  is  nothing  real  in  the  universe  except  redis- 
tributions of  matter  and  energy  in  the  ether.  To 
which  it  may  be  answered — first,  that  matter, 
energy,  ether,  are  simply  conceptual  formulae  of 
science,  corresponding  to  a  reality  which  we  can- 
not get  at,  but  which  we  get  nearest  when  we  know 
it  in  ourselves  as  thought;  and  secondly,  that  no 
juggling  with  these  concepts  can  possibly  account 
for  even  the  materialistic  philosophy. 

"There  can  be  little  doubt,"  Huxley  said,  "that 
the  further  science  advances,  the  more  extensively 
and  consistently  will  all  the  phenomena  be  repre- 
sented by  materialistic  formulae  and  symbols." 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  129 

"But  the  man  of  science,  who,  forgetting  the 
limits  of  philosophical  inquiry,  slides  from  these 
formulae  and  symbols  into  what  is  commonly  un- 
derstood by  materialism,  seems  to  me  to  place  him- 
self on  a  level  with  the  mathematician  who  should 
mistake  the  x's  and  y's  with  which  he  works  his 
problems  for  real  entities;  and  with  this  further 
disadvantage  as  compared  with  the  mathematician 
that  the  blunders  of  the  latter  are  of  no  practical 
consequence,  while  the  errors  of  systematic  ma- 
terialism may  paralyze  the  energies  and  destroy 
the  beauty  of  life." 

As  Prof.  Karl  Pearson  puts  it  in  his  "  Grammar 
of  Science":  "The  problem  of  whether  life  is  or 
is  not  a  mechanism,  is  not  a  question  of  whether 
the  same  things,  'matter'  and  'force/  are  or  are 
not  at  the  back  of  organic  and  inorganic  phe- 
nomena— of  what  is  at  the  back  of  either  class  of 
sense-impressions  we  know  absolutely  nothing — 
but  of  whether  the  conceptual  shorthand  of  the 
physicist,  this  ideal  world  of  ether,  atom,  and 
molecule,  will  or  will  not  also  suffice  to  describe 
the  biologist's  perceptions." 

Those  who  may  be  inclined  to  dissent  from  the 
view  that  Science  deals  merely  with  "counters;" 
which  are  representative  of  reality,  may  be  re- 
minded that  even  in  the  psychical  realm  we  do  the 
same.  Thus  Berkeley  affirms  over  and  over  again 
that  no  idea  can  be  formed  of  a  soul  or  spirit. 


130  The  Bible  of  Nature 

"The  words  will,  send,  spirit,  do  not  stand  for 
different  ideas,  or  in  truth,  for  any  idea  at  all,  but 
for  something  which  is  very  different  from  ideas, 
and  which,  being  an  agent,  cannot  be  like  unto  or 
represented  by  any  idea  whatever."  And  similarly, 
to  go  to  the  other  pole,  namely,  scientific  psychology, 
we  find  one  of  its  ablest  exponents,  Professor  Miin- 
sterberg,  admitting  that  it  "is  not  an  expression 
of  reality,  but  a  complicated  transformation  of 
it,  worked  out  for  special  logical  purposes  in 
the  service  of  our  life."  ("  Psychology  and  Life," 
1899.) 

Fundamental  Mysteriousness  of  Nature. — Let  us 
put  the  matter  in  another  way  by  asking  whether 
Science  has  any  contribution  to  make  toward  a 
recognition  of  the  spirituality  of  Nature.  At  first, 
of  course,  Science  draws  in  its  horns  and  says  NO. 
That  is  not  its  metier.  But  it  is  better  than  its 
word,  for  it  discloses  Rationality,  Order,  Unity, 
Progress;  and  that  is  great  gain.  It  also  recog- 
nizes the  fundamental  mysteriousness  of  Nature, 
and  that  in  three  ways.  There  is  mysteriousness  in 
the  common  denominator — say,  Matter,  Energy, 
Ether — to  which  it  seeks  to  reduce  things.  There 
is  mysteriousness  in  the  sequences  it  discloses, 
when  the  resultant  consequences  are  new  as 
compared  with  their  component  antecedents. 
There  is  mysteriousness  in  the  beginnings  from 
which  it  starts  in  its  genetic  descriptions;  they  do 


Organisms  and  Their  Origin  131 

not  suggest  what  is  to  come  out  of  them  any  more 
than  an  egg  suggests  a  bird. 

Fortuitousness. — The  general  trend  of  evolution- 
ary thinking  and  speculation  inclines  us  to  enter- 
tain the  belief  that  the  living  may  have  emerged 
from  the  not-living  in  ages  long  since  past.  If  so, 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  did  not  emerge  by  chance, 
but  was  as  rigorously  predetermined  as  the  origin 
of  the  solar  system  from  a  swarm  of  meteorites. 
Lord  Kelvin  made  himself  responsible  for  the 
statement,  that  while  "fortuitous  concourse  of 
atoms"  is  not  an  inappropriate  description  of  the 
formation  of  a  crystal,  it  is  utterly  absurd  in  re- 
spect to  the  coming  into  existence,  or  the  growth, 
or  the  continuation,  of  the  molecular  combinations 
presented  in  the  bodies  of  living  things.1  One 
agrees  with  the  latter  part  of  the  statement,  but  one 
finds  it  difficult  to  entertain  the  first.  What  does 
a  "fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms"  mean,  unless 
simply  a  concourse  whose  antecedent  conditions 
are  unknown  to  us?  It  cannot  mean  a  chaotic 
state  of  things,  if  it  gives  rise  to  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  of  cosmic  units — a  crystal. 

In  Conclusion. — If  we  see  any  good  reason  for 

1  Which,  he  went  on  to  say,  compel  us  to  conclude  that 
there  is  scientific  reason  for  believing  in  the  existence  of  a 
creative  and  directive  power.  See  Professor  Ray  Lankes- 
ter's  Letter  to  the  Times,  May  17,  1903,  and  his  "King- 
dom of  Man,"  1907,  p.  62. 


132  The  Bible  of  Nature 

believing  in  the  erstwhile  origin  of  the  living  from 
the  not-living,  we  give  a  greater  continuity  to  the 
course  of  events,  and  we  must  again  read  some- 
thing into  the  common  denominator  of  science — 
Matter,  Energy,  and  the  Ether.  We  have  already 
read  into  this,  Wonder  and  Mystery,  Harmony  and 
Order,  and  we  must  now  read  into  it — Progress 
and,  from  a  philosophical  standpoint,  Purpose. 
Unless  Increase  of  Complexity  and  Integration, 
Harmony  and  Beauty,  be  considered  Ends  justi- 
fying themselves,  we  cannot  read  the  Riddle  of  the 
Earth  considered  by  itself.  If,  however,  the  dust 
of  the  earth  did  naturally  give  rise  to  living  creat- 
ures, if  they  are  in  a  real  sense  her  children,  then 
we  understand  better  all  the  groaning  and  travail- 
ing, and  what  seemed  only  a  development  becomes 
an  evolution. 


IV 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  ORGANISMS 


IV 
THE  EVOLUTION  OF  ORGANISMS 

The  General  Idea  of  Evolution. — In  human  affairs 
what  seems  to  the  careless  to  be  quite  novel  is  often 
revealed  to  the  careful  student  as  the  natural  out- 
come of  processes  which  have  their  origin  in  an- 
tiquity. We  see  the  gradual  growth  of  social 
organizations,  the  natural  transition  from  one  es- 
tablished order  of  things  to  another  slightly  differ- 
ent position  of  temporary  equilibrium,  the  trans- 
formation of  one  institution  into  another,  and — 
apart  from  any  philosophy  of  history — we  sum  up 
what  we  observe  in  the  general  concept  of  social 
evolution.  It  was,  indeed,  in  relation  to  human 
affairs  that  the  evolution-formula  first  became  a 
useful  organon,  and  it  is  an  oft-told  tale  how  it 
was  gradually  applied  to  the  heavens  above  and 
to  the  earth  beneath  and  to  animate  nature  in 
general.1  Thence,  improved  by  the  using,  the 
formula  has  returned  for  reapplication  to  human 
history.  Now.  although  there  are  noteworthy 
differences  between  the  making  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem, the  differentiation  of  the  earth,  the  evolution 

1  See  the  author's  "Progress  of  Science." 
135 


136  The  Bible  of  Nature 

of  living  creatures,  and  the  history  of  societary 
forms,  all  cases  have  this  in  common,  that  a  process 
of  Becoming  leads  to  a  new  phase  of  Being.  The 
study  of  evolution  is  a  study  of  Werden  and  Ver- 
gehen  and  Weiter-Werden.  The  general  idea  of 
evolution  is,  that  the  present  is  the  child  of  the 
past  and  the  parent  of  the  future. 

The  evolution-idea  is  probably  as  old  as  clear 
thinking,  which  we  may  date  from  the  (unknown) 
time  when  man  discovered  the  year — with  its 
marvellous  object-lesson  of  recurrent  sequences — 
and  realized  that  his  race  had  a  history.  Whatever 
may  have  been  its  origin,  the  idea — that  the  pres- 
ent is  the  child  of  a  simpler  past  and  the  parent  of 
a  more  complex  future — was  familiar  to  several 
of  the  ancient  Greek  philosophers,  as  it  was  to 
Hume  and  Kant;  it  fired  the  imagination  of  Lu- 
cretius and  linked  him  to  another  poet  of  evolution 
— Goethe;  it  persisted,  like  a  latent  germ,  through 
the  centuries  of  other  than  scientific  preoccupa- 
tion; it  was  made  actual  by  the  pioneers  of  mod- 
ern aetiology — men  like  Buffon,  Lamarck,  Eras- 
mus Darwin,  Treviranus,  and  Etienne  Geoffroy 
St.  Hilaire — and  it  became  current  intellectual 
coin  when  Charles  Darwin,  Alfred  Russel  Wallace, 
Herbert  Spencer,  Haeckel,  and  Huxley,  with 
united  but  varied  achievements,  won  the  convic- 
tion of  the  majority  of  thoughtful  men.  Since 
this  achievement  the  fact  of  organic-evolution  has 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  137 

been  taken  for  granted,  and  there  has  been  a  con- 
centration of  inquiry  on  the  originative  and  di- 
rective factors  in  the  mysterious  process  of  organic 
becoming.1 

Stated  concretely,  the  general  doctrine  of  de- 
scent or  organic  evolution  suggests,  as  we  all  know, 
that  the  plants  and  animals  now  around  us  are  the 
results  of  natural  processes  working  throughout 
the  ages,  that  the  forms  we  see  are  the  lineal  de- 
scendants of  ancestors  on  the  whole  somewhat 
simpler,  that  these  are  descended  from  yet  simpler 
forms,  and  so  on  backward,  till  we  lose  our  clue 
in  the  unknown — but  doubtless  momentous — vital 
events  of  pre-Cambrian  ages,  or,  in  other  words, 
in  the  thick  mist  of  life's  beginnings. 

Why  do  we  accept  this  modal  interpretation? 
The  view  that  things  have  always  been  as  they  are 
is  demonstrably  false;  the  theory  of  successive 
cataclysms  and  subsequent  recommencements  is 
hardly  thinkable;  the  only  available  scientific 
formulation  is  the  theory  of  descent.  We  accept 
it  because  it  fits  the  facts  we  know,  because  no 
facts  contradict  it,  because  it  is  congruent  with  our 
interpretation  of  other  orders  of  facts.  We  can- 
not verify  it  as  we  can  verify  the  indestructibility 
of  matter,  the  conservation  of  energy,  or  the  for- 
mula of  gravitation,  but  we  do  know  that  there  is  a 

1  See  the  author's  "  Study  of  Animal  Life  "  and  "  The 
Science  of  Life." 


138  The  Bible  of  Nature 

certain  amount  of  evolution  going  on  under  our 
eyes,  and  that  not  confined  to  Mr.  Burbank's 
garden  or  the  breeders'  pens.  We  extend  the  idea 
to  the  past  and  find  that  it  works  well. 

Every  one  knows  how  Darwin  with  sublime 
patience  accumulated  evidence  of  evolution  (a) 
from  the  distribution  of  animals  in  space;  (6)  from 
their  successive  appearance  in  time;  (c)  from 
actual  changes  observed  in  domestication,  culti- 
vation, and  in  nature;  (d)  from  facts  of  anatomical 
structure,  such  as  homologous  and  vestigial  or- 
gans, and  (e)  from  the  abbreviated  recapitulation 
of  the  past  which  seems  to  occur  in  individual  de- 
velopment. But  magistral  as  his  work  was,  it  did 
not,  and  could  not,  demonstrate  the  doctrine  of  de- 
scent; it  simply  gave  what  one  may  call  a  cumula- 
tive justification  by  showing  how  well  the  formula 
fitted  a  vast  series  of  facts.  Thus  the  phrase  "  evi- 
dences of  evolution,"  except  as  applied  to  what  we 
actually  see  going  on,  is  not  altogether  appropriate. 
Every  differentiation  and  every  adaptation  of  struct- 
ure or  of  function  may  be  interpreted  as  a  product, 
and  may  thus  become  "an  evidence  of  evolution." 

Validity  of  Scientific  Interpretation. — It  is  necessary 
at  this  point  to  interpolate  a  general  considera- 
tion. The  Theory  of  Descent  tacitly  makes  the 
assumption — the  basal  hope  of  all  biology — that 
it  is  not  only  legitimate  but  promiseful  to  try  to  in- 
terpret scientifically  the  history  of  life  upon  the 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  139 

earth.  If  any  one  has  good  reason  for  believing 
that  the  long  process  of  Becoming,  which  has 
eventually  led  to  ourselves  and  our  complex  ani- 
mate surroundings,  is  altogether  too  mysterious  or 
too  marvellous  to  admit  of  successful  treatment  by 
ordinary  scientific  methods,  then  he  denies  at  the 
outset  the  validity  of  the  evolution  formula.  There 
is  no  use  going  further.  Here  is  the  parting  of 
the  ways,  and  there  is  no  via  media.  The  facts 
of  history  as  the  rocks  reveal  them  will  remain,  but 
the  book  is  shut  for  science.  The  order  of  Nature 
remains,  but  it  is  no  longer  the  order  of  scientific 
intelligibility. 

If  any  one  decides  on  a  priori  grounds  that  there 
is  no  hopefulness  in  attempting  a  scientific  anal- 
ysis of  the  confessedly  vast  and  perplexing  prob- 
lem of  genesis,  then  let  him  remain  poet  or  artist, 
philosopher  or  theologian.  There  is  no  sense  in 
niggling  criticism  if  the  scientific  method  is  pre- 
judged as  invalid. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  scientific  attempt  at 
formulating  the  steps  in  genesis  is  legitimate,  and 
if  it  has  made  good  progress,  considering  its  youth, 
then  let  us  rigidly  exclude  from  our  science  all  other 
than  scientific  interpretations;  let  us  cease  to  juggle 
with  words  by  attempting  a  mongrel  mixture  of 
scientific  and  transcendental  formulation;  let  us 
stop  trying  to  eke  out  demonstrable  factors  by  as- 
suming in  the  same  breath  alongside  of  these, 


140  The  Bible  of  Nature 

"ultra-scientific  causes,"  "spiritual  influxes," 
et  hoc  (jenus  omne;  let  us  cease  writing  or  reading 
books  with  titles  like  "  God  or  Natural  Selection," 
whose  initial  false  antinomy  is  sufficient  index  of 
their  misunderstanding.  Not,  of  course,  that  we 
are  objecting  for  a  moment  to  any  metaphysical 
or  theological  interpretations  whatsoever;  we  are 
simply  stating  the  commonplace  that  it  is  unprofit- 
able to  try  to  talk  two  languages  at  once,  that  we 
cannot  with  sanity  have  scientific  formulae  mixed 
up  with  transcendental  formulae  in  one  sentence; 
and  that  to  place  these  against  one  another  is  to 
oppose  incommensurables  and  to  display  an  ig- 
norance of  what  the  aim  of  science  is.  The  great 
French  physiologist  Claude  Bernard  has  written, 
"  I  am  persuaded  that  the  day  will  come  when  the 
physiologist,  the  poet,  and  the  philosopher  will 
speak  the  same  language  and  will  understand  one 
another."  1  We  feel  sure  about  the  second  part 
of  this  prophecy,  that  there  will  be  mutual  under- 
standing; but  we  cannot  even  hope  for  the  day 
when  physiologist,  poet,  and  philosopher  will 
speak  the  same  language. 

The  Actual  History  as  Disclosed  by  the  Palaeontol- 
ogists.— Returning  to  the  actual  history  of  the 
forms  of  life — and  of  course  the  succession  of 

1 "  Je  suis  persuade*  qu'un  jour  viendra  ou  le  physiologiste, 
le  poete,  et  le  philosophe  parleront  la  meme  langle  et 
s'entendront  tous." 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  141 

events  remains  whether  we  are  scientific  evolu- 
tionists or  not — we  find  that  the  patience  of  the 
palaeontologists  has  been  gradually  disclosing  a 
majestic  pageant,  an  age-long,  ever-changing  pro- 
cession of  faunas  and  floras  across  the  stage  of  the 
earth.  If  we  had  a  series  of  instantaneous  daily 
photographs  of  all  that  has  taken  place  since  life 
began  to  be,  a  complete  pictorial  history  of  the 
past  would  be  possible,  and  evolution  would  be 
verified.  If  even  complete  remains  of  past  ages 
had  been  safely  buried  in  great  treasure  houses, 
such  as  Frederic  Harrison  has  proposed  should 
henceforth  be  made  for  the  enlightenment  of  pos- 
terity, then  palaeontology  would  be  an  easier  busi- 
ness than  it  is.  Then  a  genealogical  tree  connect- 
ing the  Protist  and  Man  would  be  possible,  and  we 
should  have  under  our  eyes  what  is  now  but  a 
dream — a  complete  record  of  the  past.  As  it  is, 
we  have  to  eke  out  our  palaeontology  with  hints 
from  comparative  anatomy  and  comparative  em- 
bryology, which  require  to  be  used  very  carefully. 
The  fossil-containing  rocks  have  often  been  com- 
pared to  a  library,  with  the  oldest  books  on  the 
lowest  shelves,  but  what  a  library!  Spoilt  by  fire 
by  water,  by  earthquake,  by  decay,  here  half  a 
shelf  awanting  and  there  a  series  of  volumes  with 
most  disappointing  gaps;  pages  out  of  books; 
words  missing  in  sentences,  and  the  vowels  awant- 
ing like  the  points  in  Hebrew.  We  are  troubled 


142  The  Bible  of  Nature 

also  by  palimpsests,  one  record  on  the  top  of 
another. 

We  cannot  wonder  at  "the  imperfection  of  the 
geological  record,"  when  we  remember  how  young 
palaeontology  is,  how  young,  for  that  matter,  man 
is — his  whole  history  but  a  tick  of  the  geological 
clock;  how  many  areas  are  still  unexplored;  how 
much  ground — being  covered  by  sea — must  re- 
main unknown.  We  cannot  wonder  that  the  ma- 
terials of  the  history  are  scrappy  when  we  under- 
stand that  only  hard  organisms  or  hard  parts  are 
likely  to  be  preserved,  that  only  certain  kinds  of 
rocks  are  suitable  tombs,  and  that  many  rocks  have 
been  unmade  and  remade  many  times  over.  As 
we  walk  along  the  shore  and  study  the  jetsam,  we 
see  how  quickly  many  of  the  sea's  memoranda 
are  obliterated.  The  wonder  really  b  that  the 
record  is  as  complete  as  it  is,  that  from  "  the  strange 
graveyards  of  the  buried  past"  we  can  learn  so 
much  about  the  life  that  once  was. 

It  is  impossible  to  read  even  a  little  about  the 
study  of  fossils  without  a  thrill  of  admiration  for 
the  patience  and  insight  of  the  biological  archae- 
ologist. He  tells  us  of  fossil  jellyfishes  and  of  the 
young  stages  of  Graptolites;  he  makes  from  frag- 
mentary specimens  a  vivid  reconstruction  of  a  prim- 
itive Vertebrate  not  much  over  an  inch  in  length; 
he  makes  the  great  dragons  of  the  prime  disport 
themselves  before  us;  he  counts  the  cuttlefish  shells 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  143 

in  an  Ichthyosaurus  stomach  and  the  embryos 
within  the  mother;  he  discovers  ancient  general- 
ized types,  like  Phenacodus,  uniting  widely  sepa- 
rate modern  orders;  he  binds  birds  to  reptiles 
(through  the  Deinosaurs)  and  flowering  to  flower* 
less  plants  (through  the  Pteridosperms) ;  he  tracks 
the  transformations  of  the  Ammonites,  and  works 
out  the  pedigree  of  the  horse  and  the  elephant. 

General  Impressions. — Looking  back  on  the  his- 
tory which  the  palaeontologists  have  with  infinite 
patience  disclosed,  we  cannot  but  be  impressed 
by  some  general  facts. 

First  of  all,  it  is  noteworthy  that,  as  Whit- 
man said,  "everything  is  equally  perfect."  When 
we  look  at  a  series  of  human  inventions,  such  as  the 
historical  gallery  of  microscopes  at  the  Paris  Ex- 
position, or  a  chronological  series  of  bicycles  or 
locomotives,  we  feel  at  once  that  the  early  stages 
are  crude  and  clumsy,  showing  the  prentice  hand. 
But  this  cannot  be  said  of  Nature's  series.  There 
is  no  crudity,  no  suggestion  of  the  half-finished, 
about  the  early  Graptolites,  or  Trilobites,  about 
the  Ammonites  and  Nautili,  about  the  Ganoid 
fishes  or  the  ancient  Saurians. 

Secondly,  no  one  can  think  over  the  evolu- 
tion of  plants  and  animals  without  feeling  that  the 
fountain  of  life  is  practically  inexhaustible.  All 
idea  of  limitation  or  economy  is  irrelevant.  There 
is  a  suggestion  of  infinite  resource.  We  seem  to  be 


144  The  Bible  of  Natwe 

in  the  presence  of  a  great  artist  who  litters  his 
studio  floor  with  priceless  sketches.  There  is  no 
suggestion  of  pursuing  a  direct  path  to  some  goal. 
Nature  is  full  of  elaborate  circuitousness;  there  are 
numerous  culs-de-sac.  If  we  are  to  know  God 
through  His  works,  this  must  enter  into  our  knowl- 
edge. We  can  understand  what  Tennyson  meant 
when  he  said,  lingering  over  the  crowded  life  in 
the  brook,  "What  an  imagination  God  has." 

Thirdly,  it  is  undeniable  that,  in  the  course  of 
the  ages,  many  types  have  quite  died  out,  leaving 
no  lineal  descendants  at  all.  We  visit  ancient  half- 
buried  cities  now  the  abode  of  bats  and  owls,  or 
majestic  deserted  shrines  still  sublime  in  their  lone- 
liness, and  there  comes  over  us  a  feeling  of  awe 
with  the  thought  that  our  race  is  so  old  that  we 
can  sometimes  hardly  tell  what  manner  of  men 
thronged  the  now  silent  streets,  or  worshipped  in 
these  empty  shrines.  But  how  is  this  feeling  in- 
creased when  we  come  to  study  the  remains  of 
races  which  have  been  wholly  erased  from  the  roll 
of  life — lost  races  whose  lineage  has  come  abso- 
lutely to  an  end! 

As  Gaudry  has  said :  "  A  host  of  creatures  have 
vanished;  the  most  powerful,  the  most  fertile  have 
not  been  spared.  There  is  a  sadness  in  the  spec- 
tacle of  so  many  inexplicable  losses."  He  was  re- 
ferring, of  course,  not  to  extinct  species,  which  are 
represented  to-day  by  living  descendants,  but  to 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  145 

what  we  must  call  extinct  types  or  lost  races,  such 
as  the  Graptolites  and  Trilobites,  the  Eurypterids 
and  Pterodactyls.  It  is  true  that  nothing  is  ever 
really  lost  in  this  economical  world.  No  scien- 
tific student  of  what  is  called  the  circulation  of 
matter  can  have  failed  to  recognize  the  deep  truth 
in  the  reincarnation  of  Buddha.  The  grass  be- 
comes the  sheep,  the  sheep  the  tiger,  the  tiger 
grass  again.  Atoms  that  compose  part  of  us  may 
have  formed  part  of  a  Deinosaur.  "The  dust  of 
Csesar,  dead  and  turned  to  clay,  may  stop  a  hole 
to  keep  the  wind  away."  Yet  the  physicists'  con- 
solation is  wan  and  cold.  The  fact  remains  that 
those  particular  combinations  of  elements  which 
we  call  lost  races — those  particular  smiles  of  cre- 
ative genius — have  disappeared  as  such  forever. 

In  most  cases,  as  far  as  we  can  judge,  the  end 
came  slowly,  and  not  by  catastrophes.  Races 
waned  and  died  out;  they  were  not  suddenly  ex- 
tinguished. Another  striking  fact  is  that  while 
evidences  of  senescence  have  been  detected  in  some 
of  the  last  representatives  of  dwindling  races,  there 
are  many  cases  where  a  full  stop  seems  to  have  been 
put  to  the  history  of  a  stock  while  it  was  yet  in  its 
prime.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  think  of  an 
elimination  of  weaklings.  As  Gaudry  says : "  While 
insignificant  creatures  persist,  the  primes  of  the 
animal  world  vanish — without  return."  The 
Ammonites  ceased  at  the  time  of  their  finest  de- 


146  The  Bible  of  Nature 

velopment;  the  sea-serpents  and  the  monstrous 
terrestrial  dragons  were  no  weaklings  when  death 
gathered  them;  the  flying  reptiles,  small  dur- 
ing the  Jurassic,  attain  large  dimensions  by  the 
end  of  the  Cretaceous,  and  then — pass  away 
forever. 

We  cannot  do  much  more  than  guess  as  to  the 
conditions  of  the  extinction  of  races.  Sometimes, 
perhaps,  there  were  changes  of  environment,  to 
meet  which  the  plasticity  of  the  creatures  was  in- 
sufficient; sometimes,  perhaps,  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence was  to  the  death,  as  it  may  have  been 
between  cuttlefishes  and  trilobites,  between  Ich- 
thyosaurs  and  Belemnites;  sometimes,  perhaps, 
there  were  constitutional  defects,  brought  about 
by  over-specialization  or  the  like,  such  as  Lu- 
cretius thought  of  when  he  pictured  races  going 
down  to  destruction,  "hampered  all  in  their  own 
death-bringing  shackles." 

Sluggish  sedentary  creatures,  walled  within  their 
castles  of  indolence,  may  have  become,  as  it  were, 
smothered  in  these.  This  is  suggested  by  the  ex- 
treme calcification  of  certain  extinct  types  like 
the  Cystoids  and  Blastoids.  Others  again,  like  the 
flying  dragons,  have  perhaps  lived  too  quickly 
for  their  constitutions,  life's  fitful  fever  proving 
too  much  for  them.  There  seems,  also,  to  be  a 
risk  involved  in  being  gigantic  or  in  being  very 
highly  specialized.  As  Marsh  says,  the  Iguanodon 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  147 

might  have  had  for  epitaph,  "I  and  my  race  died 
of  over-specialization." 

The  facts  at  any  rate  remain,  and  they  must 
enter  into  our  picture — our  conception — of  Nature. 
The  idea  of  waste  of  beauty  or  fineness  of  structure 
is  quite  irrelevant. 

"'So  careful  of  the  type/  but  no, 
From  scarped  cliff  and  quarried  stone 
She  cries,  'a  thousand  types  are  gone; 
I  care  for  nothing,  all  shall  go/" 

However  we  may  try  to  explain  it — which 
science  never  seeks  to  do — in  relation  to  our  often 
very  anthropomorphic  concepts  of  End  and 
Purpose — the  fact  remains  that  Nature  is,  as  we 
have  said,  continually  painting  out  her  picture, 
continually  breaking  her  mould. 

This,  perhaps,  was  the  meaning  of  that  strange 
stanza  in  Emerson's  "Song  of  Nature" : 

"Twice  I  have  moulded  an  image, 
And  thrice  outstretched  my  hand; 
Made  one  of  day,  and  one  of  night 
And  one  of  the  salt  sea-sand." 

Perhaps  we  should  infer  that  a  thing  of  beauty, 
a  smile  of  creative  genius,  is  sufficient  end  in 
itself.1 

1  Speaking  of  lost  races,  warrants  us  in  saying  a  word  on 
a  subject  which  is  always  near  the  heart  of  the  lover  of  liv- 
ing creatures — we  refer  to  the  present-day  extinction  of 


148  The  Bible  of  Nature 

The  strange  facts  as  to  the  entire  passing  away 
of  animal  races,  like  the  parallel  facts  in  regard  to 
particular  human  races,  cannot  fail  to  raise,  and 
ought  to  raise,  a  question  as  to  the  endurance  of 
our  own  modern  races.  It  sends  a  chill  to  patri- 
otic hearts  to  think  of  any  human  race  passing 
wholly  away,  and  yet  such  things  have  been.  So 
far  as  a  race  goes  on  accumulating  organic  debts 

types.  Long  ago  life  was  like  a  great  army  always  losing 
from  its  ranks,  but  yet  always  gaining  new  recruits.  Now 
it  seems  as  if  it  only  loses.  This  may  be  partly  due  to  the 
fact  that  careful  scientific  records  extend  over  a  very  short 
time,  but  it  is  also  due  to  our  gross  carelessness  of  life. 
We  can  breed  a  little,  but  we  cannot  any  longer  domesti- 
cate. There  is  some  success  with  Bacteria,  for  we  are 
breeding  new  species,  and  we  are  apparently  learning  to 
tame  old  ones.  But  the  present  point  is  our  carelessness 
in  elimination.  On  one  occasion,  some  thirty  years  ago,  no 
fewer  than  one  hundred  and  four  African  elephants  were 
destroyed  in  one  great  battue — a  dismal  butchery,  which 
for  obvious  reasons  will  never  occur  again.  The  story  of 
the  American  bison  is  familiar.  The  great  baleen  whale  is 
verging  on  extinction;  the  quagga  has  probably  gone;  the 
great  white  rhinoceros — the  largest  terrestrial  mammal 
after  the  elephant — is  almost  gone;  the  giraffe  is  fading 
away,  and  so  on  through  a  dismal  list.  Mr.  Martin's  Cas- 
torologia:  the  book  of  the  beaver,  might  be  described  as 
the  funeral  oration  on  a  dying  race.  The  tale  of  disap- 
pearing birds  is  heart-rending,  and  here  we  may  quote  a 
paragraph  from  one  of  our  most  picturesque  naturalists, 
Mr.  C.  T.  Hudson.  After  describing  the  American  ostrich 
or  Rhea — notable  for  its  fleetness,  "  great  staying  powers, 
and  beautiful  strategy  when  hunted,"  and  for  its  strange 
habit  of  "  running  with  one  wing  raised  vertically,  like  a 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  149 

"  % 

(beside  which  national  debts  are  trifling)  and 
mortgaging  in  the  direst  sense  future  generations, 
so  surely  is  it  doomed  to  disappear,  and  justly — 
"in  the  gathering  blackness  of  the  frown  of  God." 
Or  the  other  hand,  we  may  strengthen  our  hands 
in  the  assurance  that  no  race  is  likely  to  be  lost  in 

great  sail — a  veritable  ship  of  the  wilderness,"  Mr.  Hud- 
son writes  as  follows: 

" Rhea-hunting,  the  'wild  mirth  of  the  desert/  which 
the  native  horseman  has  known  for  the  last  three  centuries, 
is  now  passing  away,  for  the  Rhea's  fleetness  can  no  longer 
avail  him.  He  may  scorn  the  horse  and  his  rider,  what 
time  he  lifts  himself  up,  but  the  cowardly  murderous 
methods  of  science,  and  a  systematiciwar  of  extermination, 
have  left  him  no  chance.  And  with  the  Rhea  go  the  fla- 
mingo, antique  and  splendid,  and  the  swans  in  their 
bridal  plumage  and  the  rufous  tinamou — sweet  and 
mournful  melodist  of  the  eventide;  and  the  noble  crested 
screamer,  that  clarion-voiced  watch-bird  of  the  night  in 
the  wilderness.  These,  and  the  other  large  avians,  to- 
gether with  the  finest  of  the  mammalians,  will  shortly  be 
lost  to  the  pampas  as  utterly  as  the  great  bustard  is  to 
England,  and  as  the  wild  turkey  and  bison  and  many  other 
species  will  shortly  be  lost  to  North  America.  Like  immor- 
tal flowers  they  have  drifted  down  to  us  on  the  ocean  of 
time,  and  their  strangeness  and  beauty  bring  to  our 
imaginations  a  dream  and  a  picture  of  that  unknown 
world  immeasurably  far  removed." 

What  can  be  done  to  stop  this?  We  should  abstain 
from  all  products  which  mean  the  extinction  of  fine  types; 
we  should  try  to  appreciate  what  is  being  lost  in  their 
aesthetic,  scientific,  and  economic  aspects;  we  should  raise 
a  prejudice  against  ruthless  sport;  and  at  the  worst  we 
should  try  to  secure  the  conservation  of  tracts  of  country 
in  which  the  waning  life  may  be  preserved. 


150  The  Bible  of  Nature 

which  it  is  the  loyal  endeavor  of  each  pair  to 
leave  after  them  not  their  worse,  but  their  bet- 
tered selves. 

Fourthly,  the  most  important  impression  we 
get  is  that  of  the  gradual  ascent  of  life.  As  the 
ages  passed,  higher  and  higher1  animals  are  seen. 
Fishes  were  on  the  scene  before  Amphibians, 
Reptiles  before  Birds. 

All  theory  apart,  in  the  course  of  the  ages  life 
has  been  slowly  creeping  upward,  finding  finer 
and  finer  expression,  and  not  along  one  line  only, 
but  along  many  lines.  It  is  not  among  backboned 
animals  only  that  we  find  the  creature  reaching 
toward  a  greater  fulness  of  life,  a  greater  richness 
of  experience,  and  an  increased  freedom  from  the 
grip  of  the  environment.  Notably  there  is  along 
many  lines  an  increasing  complexity  of  nervous 
system,  and  a  correlated  liberation  of  the  Psyche. 

1  This  is  not  an  anthropomorphic  impression.  We  do 
not  mean  by  "higher"  merely  liker  man;  we  use  the  two- 
fold standard  of  differentiation  and  integration.  Differ- 
entiation is  the  structural  side  of  division  of  labor,  it 
means  increased  complexity  and  specialization  of  parts. 
Integration  means  the  consolidation,  harmonizing,  and 
regulation  of  the  body  into  a  more  and  more  perfect  unity. 
Thus  just  as  a  modern  locomotive  is  a  finer  product  than 
Stephenson's  "Puffing  Billy,"  in  being  much  more  differ- 
entiated and  integrated,  so  the  bird  is  a  much  higher  ani- 
mal than  the  earthworm.  That  we  do  not  mean  liker  man 
is  obvious  when  we  say  that  the  grass  is  a  much  higher 
plant  than  the  seaweed.  It  is  much  more  differentiated 
and  integrated,  but  it  is  not  any  nearer  man. 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  151 

Let  me  quote  a  paragraph — freely  translated  from 
Gaudry: 

"The  organic  world  as  a  whole  has  made  progress. 
Suppose  a  voyager  on  the  oceans  of  ages;  in  the  Cam- 
brian times  his  barque  meets  trilobites,  but  no  fishes;  he 
nears  the  shore,  and  there  is  the  silence  of  death.  After 
long  voyaging  he  finds  himself  at  the  end  of  the  Primary 
era;  fishes  have  replaced  trilobites,  and  on  land  there  is 
no  longer  silence.  Here  is  the  tramp  and  cry  of  reptiles 
who  prophesy  the  advent  of  warm-blooded  vertebrates. 
The  traveller  sails  from  age  to  age,  and  reaches  the  middle 
of  the  Secondary  era.  Charmingly  beautiful  ammonites 
play  around  his  vessel,  legions  of  belemnites  mingle  with 
them;  ichthyosaurs,  plesiosaurs,  and  teleosaurs  follow  his 
track.  He  goes  ashore,  and  the  giant  deinosaurs  resting 
on  their  tails  open  their  huge  arms;  pterodactyls  and 
other  dragons  swoop  aloft;  the  first  bird  tries  its  wings, 
and  some  small  mammals  show  face  timidly.  Nature, 
marvellous  in  the  Primary  ages,  has  become  yet  more 
marvellous;  it  has  made  progress.  If  our  traveller  be  not 
fatigued  with  his  long  wanderings,  he  will  find  in  the 
Tertiary  ages  the  first  monkeys  and  horses,  and  a  thou- 
sand other  mammals.  Later  on  he  will  find  himself — the 
man — artist  and  poet — minister  and  interpreter  of  nature 
— the  man  who  thinks  and  prays.  Truly,  the  history  of 
the  world  as  a  whole  is  the  history  of  a  progressive  evolu- 
tion. Where  will  this  solution  lead  us?" 

Looking  back  again  at  the  more  than  plausibly 
worked-out  history  of  backboned  animals,  we  see 
that  the  evolution  is  marked  by  a  progressive  differ- 
entiation of  the  nervous  system,  and  that  the  use 
made  of  this  is  to  adapt  the  organism  more  per- 


152  The  Bible  of  Nature 

fectly  to  its  environment,  and  in  the  higher  forms 
to  adapt  the  environment  to  the  organism.  Surely 
one  legitimate  deduction — so  obvious  that  many 
miss  it — is  just  this,  that  the  primary  use  of  our 
highly  evolved  nervous  system  is  not  to  enable  us 
to  construct  philosophies,  but  to  empower  us  to 
adapt  ourselves  more  perfectly  to  the  inexorables, 
"moulding  the  exile  to  his  fate,"  and  to  empower 
us  to  reach  a  greater  mastery  of  Nature,  to  enter 
into  our  Kingdom,  and  to  win  a  firmer  control  of 
life.  We  are  all  too  apt  to  take  an  unnecessarily 
academic  view  of  our  destiny. 

What  do  we  mean  by  "entering  into  our  King- 
dom"? We  mean  that,  having  gone  so  far,  we 
must  go  further  in  our  mastery  of  natural  powers, 
in  our  utilization  of  natural  resources,  in  our  revolt 
against  natural  selection.  Eutopias  we  want,  a 
replacing  of  slums  by  garden  cities,  a  sweeping 
away  of  the  disfigurements  with  which  we  have 
half-spoiled  beautiful  places,  landscape-gardening 
on  a  large  scale,  instead  of  the  accumulation  of  ash- 
heaps.  Eutechnics  we  want,  healthful,  pleasur- 
able function  well  distributed,  and  an  ending  to 
occupations  which  mean  miserable  lives  and  un- 
timely deaths.  Eugenics  we  want,  an  improve- 
ment of  the  human  breed,  an  active  pride  of 
race,  an  enlightened  conscience  as  to  marrying 
and  having  children,  and  a  more  evolutionary 
education.  How  much  more  we  want  and  must 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  153 

have!  We  have  only  begun  to  enter  upon  our 
Kingdom.1 

Factors  in  Evolution. — When  we  pass  from  the 
modal  formula  of  organic  evolution  to  consider 
how  the  process  works,  we  pass  from  clearness  to 
perplexing  uncertainty.  Huxley's  saying,  "  If  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  (of  Natural  Selection)  were 
swept  away,  evolution  would  still  stand  where  it 
was,"  has  puzzled  some,  but  it  obviously  means 
that  while  all  research  strengthens  our  confidence 
in  the  general  idea  of  organic  evolution,  we  are 
very  uncertain  as  to  the  actual  mechanism.  The 
fact  of  evolution  forces  itself  upon  us;  the  factors 
elude  us.  There  can  be  no  dogmatism.  The 
consistent  evolutionist  knows  that  he  and  his  in- 
terpretation, like  the  world  which  he  studies,  are 
within  the  sweep  of  the  evolution  process,  have 
been  evolved,  and  are  still  evolving.  He  never 
claims  finality  of  interpretation,  for  that  would 
be  self-contradiction. 

Variations:  The  Raw  Materials  of  Progress. — The 
first  great  question  concerns  what  may  be  called 
the  raw  materials  of  progress — the  origin  and 
nature  of  those  organic  changes  or  variations  on 
which  the  possibility  of  evolution  depends.  Dar- 
win started  from  the  broad  fact  that  variability 
exists,  illustrating  it  chiefly  from  domesticated 
animals  and  cultivated  plants;  he  postulated  an 
1  See  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester's  "Kingdom  of  Man,"  1907. 


154  The  Bible  of  Nature 

abundant  crop  of  organic  changes,  toward  tares 
and  toward  wheat,  and  he  showed  how  a  process 
of  thinning  and  singling,  sifting  and  winnowing, 
would  operate  upon  the  ever-growing,  ever-chang- 
ing crop,  so  that  the  result  was  progress. 

But  all  science  begins  with  measurement,  and 
the  great  step  in  advance  that  has  been  made  of 
recent  years  is  in  the  dry  and  tedious,  but  peremp- 
torily necessary  task  of  accurately  recording  the 
variations  that  do  actually  occur.  Life  is  so 
abundant  and  so  Protean  that  biologists  have 
tended  to  draw  upon  the  variability  account  as  if 
there  was  no  limit  to  it,  scarce  waiting  to  see  wheth- 
er their  cheques  were  honored.  Without  being 
biologists,  simply  as  clear  thinkers,  we  must  feel 
the  unsatisfactoriness  of  merely  postulating  vari- 
ability to  meet  the  demands  of  particular  problems. 
In  ordinary  evolutionist  discourse,  as  Mr.  Bate- 
son  justly  points  out,  there  has  been  continual 
use  of  the  argument, "  If  such  and  such  a  vari- 
ation then  took  place  and  was  favorable,"  then 
.  .  .  ,  a  mode  of  talk  which  we  would  ridicule  in 
Paley  or  Butler,  but  which  we  in  our  inconsistency 
still  tolerate  in  ourselves.  It  is  obviously  our  busi- 
ness to  be  able  to  say,  "such  and  such  variations 
do  occur  in  Nature,  therefore.  ..."  But  we 
are  now  changing  all  tkis.  The  very  title — "  Bio- 
metrika  " — of  a  new  journal  is  a  sign  of  the  times. 
In  hoc  signo  labvramus.  The  recording  and  sta- 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  155 

tistical  registration  of  organic  changes  that  actually 
occur  is  rapidly  helping  us  out  of  the  slough  of 
vagueness,  in  which,  to  the  physicist's  contempt, 
biology  has  so  long  floundered.  It  is  too  soon  to 
sum  up  the  results  of  recent  studies  on  variation, 
but  some  facts  are  clear. 

(1)  Variability  is  even  greater  than  Darwin  sup- 
posed, and  is  not  less  among  creatures  living  in  a 
state  of  nature  than  among  those  domesticated  or 
cultivated  forms  on  which  the  great  master  con- 
centrated his  attention.     Whenever  we  settle  down 
to  measure,  to  identify,  to  describe,  we  find  that 
specific  diagnoses  are  average  statements,  that  spe- 
cific characters  require  a  curve  of  frequency  for 
their  expression,  that  the  living  creature  is  usu- 
ally a  Proteus.     It  is  true  that  there  are  long-lived, 
non-plastic,  conservative  types,  built,  as  it  were, 
not  for  a  day,  but  for  all  time,  like  Lingula,  and 
perhaps  a  score  of  other  well-known  organisms, 
where  no  visible  variability   (of   hard   parts,  at 
least)  can  be  proved  even  in  a  million  years.    But 
to  judge  from  these  as  to  the  march  of  evolution  is 
like  estimating  the  rush  of  a  river  from  the  eddies 
of  a  sheltered  pool. 

(2)  It  has  become  possible  to  distinguish  be- 
tween minute  fluctuations,  which  seem  to  be  of 
general  occurrence,  in  which  the  offspring  has  a 
little  more  or  a  little  less  of  a  given  character  than 
its  parents  had,  and  discontinuous  variations  or 


156  The  Bible  of  Nature 

mutations,  in  which  something  new  emerges  sud- 
denly without  gradual  stages  and  with  no  small 
degree  of  perfectness.  Using  Galton's  simile  we 
can  picture  a  polyhedron  oscillating  or  rocking 
on  one  of  its  faces,  this  would  be  fluctuation; 
we  can  picture  it  rolling  over  to  a  position  of 
equilibrium  on  another  face,  this  would  be 
mutation. 

Though  there  is  some  truth  in  Lamarck's  saying 
that  "Nature  is  never  brusque,"  and  though  we 
may  justifiably  disbelieve  entirely  in  grotesque 
"  Jack-in-the-Box  "  phenomena,  such  as  Bastian's 
"  Heterogenesis  "  (e.  g.,  the  origin  of  a  large  infu- 
sorian  by  the  transformation  of  a  Rotifer's  egg), 
which  would  make  Nature  magical  and  irrational, 
we  now  know,  through  the  work  of  Mr.  Bateson 
and  others,  that  discontinuous  variations  are  not 
rarities.  In  particular  we  know  through  the  beau- 
tiful work  of  De  Vries  on  "  Evening  Primroses  and 
Other  Plants,"  that  organisms  may  give  rise  to 
offspring  which  are  distinctively  new,  and  that 
these  are  mutations  come  to  stay.  Such  words  as 
"freaks"  and  "sports"  are  not  very  happy,  but 
they  suggest  the  idea  of  what  Mr.  Galton  calls 
"transilient"  variations — the  fact  that  organic 
structure  may  pass  with  seeming  abruptness  from 
one  position  of  organic  equilibrium  to  another. 
We  have,  in  short,  to  deal  with  a  Proteus  who 
leaps  as  well  as  creeps. 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  157 

De  Vries'  Evening  Primroses  — Let  us  recall,  for  a 
moment,  the  case  of  the  Evening  Primrose  (Oeno- 
thera  lamarckiana),  which  Professor  Hugo  De 
Vries  found  as  an  escape  in  a  potato-field  at  Hil- 
versum  in  Holland.  Its  chief  interest  was  its 
changefulness;  it  was,  so  to  speak,  frolicking  in  its 
freedom;  it  was  in  a  variable  mood.  Almost  all  its 
organs  were  varying — as  if  swayed  by  a  restless 
tide  of  life.  It  showed  minute  fluctuations  from 
generation  to  generation;  it  showed  extraordinary 
freaks  such  as  fasciation  and  pitcher-forming;  it 
showed  hesitancy  as  to  how  long  it  meant  to  live, 
for  while  the  majority  were  biennial,  many  were 
annual,  and  a  few  were  triennial;  best  of  all,  it 
showed  what  could  hardly  be  otherwise  described 
than  as  new  species  in  the  making.  From  this 
stock,  De  Vries  obtained  in  a  short  time  half  a 
dozen  or  more  distinct  varieties  or  elementary 
species,  breeding  true  generation  after  genera- 
tion. In  short,  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  have 
found  a  plant  in  process  of  rapid  evolution.  It  is 
rash  to  generalize  as  yet,  but  other  cases  of  muta- 
tion are  now  being  studied,  and  it  may  be  that  in 
many  instances  "new  varieties  are  produced  from 
existing  forms  by  sudden  leaps."  If  there  are 
many  such  cases,  the  aspect  of  the  evolution 
theory  will  have  to  be  changed;  we  shall  attach 
less  importance  to  the  accumulation  of  minute 
fluctuations,  and  we  shall  not  have  to  lay  such 


158  The  Bible  of  Nature 

a  heavy  burden  on  the  shoulders  of  natural  se- 
lection. 

The  Organism  is  a  Unity. — (3)  It  is  also  becoming 
more  and  more  evident  that  the  living  creature 
varies,  in  many  cases,  as  a  unity.  If  there  is  more 
of  one  character,  there  may  be  less  of  another;  one 
change  brings  another  in  its  train.  As  Darwin 
pointed  out,  there  is  a  "correlation  of  variation." 
We  see  one  part  varying  and  we  can  plausibly  say 
that  its  changes  in  a  given  direction  are  useful  and 
life-preserving,  but  meanwhile  there  may  be  in  the 
train  of  this  observable  variation  another  which  is 
destined  to  be  of  far  greater  import.  Another 
aspect  of  the  same  idea,  illustrated  for  instance 
by  the  authors  of  "  The  Evolution  of  Sex," '  is  that 
changes  apparently  confined  to  minute  and  super- 
ficial parts  may  be,  as  it  were,  the  correlated  out- 
crop of  deeper  physiological  variations  of  the  whole 
system  or  of  a  large  part  of  the  system.  As  Pro- 
fessor Ray  Lankester  says,2  "We  should,  perhaps, 
more  generally  conceive  of  variation  as  not  so  much 
the  accomplishment  and  presentation  of  one  little 
mark  or  difference  in  weight,  length,  or  color,  as  the 
expression  of  a  tendency  to  vary  in  a  given  tissue  or 
organ  in  a  particular  way.  Thus  we  are  prepared 

1  P.  Geddes  and  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  "  The  Evolution  of 
Sex,"  "  Contemporary  Science    Series,"  Revised  Edition, 
1901. 

2  "The  Kingdom  of  Man,"  1907,  p.  132. 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  159 

for  the  rapid  extension  and  dominance  of  the  varia- 
tion if  once  it  is  favored  by  selective  breeeding." 
Modifications. — Besides  variations  which  spring 
from  within — emerging  from  the  penetralia  of  the 
germ-cells,  where  lies  the  fountain  of  all  lasting 
organic  change — there  are  modifications  superin- 
duced from  without.  They  may  be  defined  as 
changes  wrought  in  the  body  of  an  individual  dur- 
ing its  lifetime,  as  the  direct  result  of  changes  in 
function  and  environment,  which  so  transcend  the 
limits  of  organic  elasticity  that  they  persist  after 
the  inducing  conditions  have  ceased  to  operate. 
The  peculiarities  in  our  finger  prints  are  variations, 
but  the  callosities  on  our  hands  are  modifications. 
The  inborn  peculiarity  of  our  facial  physiognomy 
is  a  variation,  but  sunburning  which  lasts  for  years 
is  a  modification.  These  modifications  or  ac- 
quired characters  are  often  of  great  personal  im- 
portance and  they  may  also  serve  as  temporary 
shields  or  screens  for  incipient  inborn  variations 
in  the  same  direction,  but  they  have  not  been 
proved  to  be  of  direct  importance  in  the  evolution 
of  races,  since  there  is  no  convincing  evidence  that 
they  can  be  transmitted  as  such  or  in  any  represen- 
tative degreee.  In  short,  organic  progress  is 
primarily  due  to  changes  in  heritable  Nature,  not 
to  changes  in  Nurture.1 

1  See  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  "Heredity  "  Murray,  London. 
1908. 


160  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Causes  of  Variations. — As  to  the  causes  of  varia- 
tions and  mutations  we  know  very  little.  We 
must  still  repeat  Darwin's  words,  "Our  ignorance 
of  the  laws  of  variation  is  profound.  Not  in  one 
case  out  of  a  hundred  can  we  pretend  to  assign  any 
reason  why  this  or  that  part  has  varied."  It  is 
probable  that  variability  is,  like  growth,  a  primary 
quality  of  living  things,  and  that  "breeding  true" 
has  arisen  secondarily  as  a  restriction.  The  re- 
lation of  genetic  continuity  between  successive 
generations  is  an  economical  arrangement  which 
secures  relative  constancy  amid  continual  flux. 
In  spite  of  this,  however,  the  Proteus  continually 
asserts  itself.  There  may  be,  for  all  we  know,  a 
process  of  growing  and  varying  inherent  in  the 
germ-plasm,  requiring  only  an  occasional  envi- 
ronmental stimulus  to  keep  it  agoing.  We  must 
remember  that  the  germ-plasm,  though  marvel- 
lously stable  in  its  general  architecture,  has  the 
instability  involved  in  great  complexity.  Sur- 
rounding it  there  is  the  very  complex,  very  varia- 
ble, nutritive  environment  of  the  body.  In  the 
processes  of  maturation  there  is  an  extraordinarily 
elaborate  shuffling  of  the  cards  which  we  call 
chromosomes.  In  fertilization,  at  the  beginning 
oi  almost  every  new  life,  we  see  the  making  of  a 
living  mosaic  of  parental  and  ancestral  contribu- 
tions, and  there  is  abundant  opportunity  for  new 
permutations  and  combinations. 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  161 

Directive  Factors  in  Evolution. — We  must  pass  now 
to  the  directive  factors  which  operate  upon  the  raw 
material  afforded  by  variability.  The  only  di- 
rective factors  we  know  of  are  included  in  the 
terms  Selection  and  Isolation.  These  are  the 
twin  directive  genii. 

Selection. — The  theory  of  Natural  Selection, 
which  Darwin  and  Wallace  first  expounded,  is 
very  familiar,  and  admits  of  brief  statement. 
Variability  is  a  fact  of  life.  The  members  of  a 
family  or  of  a  species  are  not  born  alike;  some  have 
qualities  which  give  them  an  advantage,  both  as 
to  "hunger"  and  as  to  *'  love";  others  are  relatively 
handicapped.  But  a  struggle  for  existence  is  also 
a  fact,  being  necessitated  especially  by  the 
abundance  of  life  and  by  the  changefulness  of  the 
environment.  Two  parents  usually  produce  many 
more  than  two  children,  and  the  population  thus 
tends  to  outrun  the  means  of  subsistence;  more- 
over, living  creatures  are  at  the  best  only  relatively 
well  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  their  life,  which 
are  changeful.  As  the  result  of  this  struggle  for 
existence,  there  is  discriminate  elimination,  the 
relatively  less  fit  being  eliminated  before  they 
reproduce.  "Of  fifty  seeds,  she  often  brings 
but  one  to  bear."  The  relatively  fitter  tend  to 
survive  and  to  reproduce,  handing  on  their  ad- 
vantages to  their  progeny.  If  advantageous  vari- 
ations are  transmitted,  if  variations  in  the  same 


162  The  Bible  of  Nature 

direction  crop  up  generation  after  generation,  if 
there  is  gradual  augmentation  of  the  amount  of 
the  profitable  peculiarity  (through  the  pairing  of 
similar  variants  or  otherwise),  and  if  the  discrim- 
inate selection  continues  consistently,  then  the 
process  will  necessarily  work  toward  the  estab- 
lishment of  new  adaptations. 

Given  a  sufficient  crop  of  variations  and  suffi- 
cient time,  what  may  a  process  of  selection  not 
effect? 

Conditions  of  Progress  through  Selection. — There 
are  two  conditions,  however;  first,  that  some  of  the 
variations  continually  occurring  are  in  the  direc- 
tion of  fitness,  and  secondly,  that  the  process  of 
elimination,  for  elimination  it  comes  to,  is  a  dis- 
criminate process.  Neither  of  these  conditions 
is  to  be  lightly  passed  over.  The  occurrence  of 
variations  in  a  profitable  direction  is  often  a  great 
puzzle,  which  has  led  some  to  take  refuge  in  verb- 
alisms, "  inherent  tendencies  to  perfection/'  and 
the  like.  Especially  when  the  new  departure  is 
not  merely  quantitative,  but  qualitatively  novel, 
and  exhibited  suddenly,  is  the  puzzle  great.  We 
have  a  Mutation  Theory,  but  'no  theory  of  muta- 
tions. Natural  Selection,  as  some  one  says,  ex- 
plains the  survival  of  the  fittest,  but  not  the  arrival 
of  the  fittest.  As  usual,  it  is  a  question  of  the 
beginnings  which  gives  us  pause.  And  as  to  the 
second  point,  we  must  be  clear  that  indiscrimi- 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  163 

nate  elimination  does  not  count  for  much  in  nat- 
ure^ methods.  We  see  the  men  in  the  fields  thin- 
ning or  singling  turnips.  With  rapid  strokes  of 
the  hoe  they  kill  nine  and  leave  a  tenth,  giving  it 
elbow  room,  and  liberating  it  from  too  intense 
competition.  But  they  do  not  pause  to  select  out 
the  most  vigorous  young  turnip  plant;  this  would 
be  discriminate  selection,  which  we  are  familiar 
with  in  the  more  intensive  cultivation  of  the  garden. 
On  the  whole,  the  process  of  thinning  turnips  is  in- 
discriminate elimination,  though,  of  course>  one 
knows  that  the  survivors  are  left  at  regular  distances, 
and  so  forth.  The  point  is  that  while  this  thinning 
is  profitable  for  the  surviving  individuals,  it  does 
not  directly  help  the  race,  it  does  not  make  for  the 
evolution  of  superior  turnips.  So  it  is  in  Nature's 
thinning  and  singling;  it  is  only  consistent  discrim- 
inate elimination  that  counts  for  much. 

One  hundred  and  thirty-six  English  sparrows 
in  America  were  worsted  by  a  severe  storm  and 
were  brought  benumbed  into  a  laboratory.  Sev= 
enty-two  revived,  sixty-four  perished.  Professor 
Rumpus  made  a  careful  comparison  of  the  elim- 
inated and  the  survivors  with  the  result  of  showing 
that  the  birds  which  perished  because  of  the  storm 
were  deficient  as  regards  certain  qualities  in  which 
those  that  survived  were  stronger.  In  other  words, 
this  storm,  at  least,  was  an  agent  in  discriminate 
elimination. 


164  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Struggle  for  Existence. — In  thinking  of  the  proc- 
ess of  Natural  Selection,  it  is  of  real  importance 
to  recognize,  with  Darwin,  that  the  phrase  "strug- 
gle for  existence"  is  used  "in  a  wide  and  meta- 
phorical sense,"  including  much  more  than  an 
internecine  scramble  for  the  necessaries  of  life — 
including  indeed  all  endeavours  for  preservation 
and  welfare,  not  only  of  the  individual,  but  of  the 
offspring  as  well.  The  struggle  expresses  itself 
not  merely  in  an  elbowing  and  jostling  around  the 
platter,  but  at  every  point  where  the  effectiveness 
of  response  which  the  creature  makes  to  the  stimuli 
playing  upon  it,  is  of  critical  moment.  It  is  much 
more  than  a  long-drawn-out  series  of  family  quar- 
rels ending  in  more  room  and  food  for  a  few  sur- 
viving members;  it  may  often  be  more  justly  de- 
scribed as  an  endeavour  after  well-being.  And 
what  may  have  been  primarily  self-regarding  im- 
pulses become  replaced  by  others  which  are  dis- 
tinctively species-maintaining,  the  self  failing  to 
find  realization  apart  from  its  family  and  its 
kindred. 

We  may  gain  some  clearness  when  we  notice 
that  struggle  is  manifold. 

(1)  It  may  be  between  near  kin  as  when  a  tad- 
pole eats  its  brother  tadpole,  or  when  the  em- 
bryos in  the  dog-whelk's  capsule  on  the  shore  play 
the  same  game,  and  illustrate  cannibalism  in  the 
cradle,  or  when  locust  devours  locust,  and  rat  kills 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  165 

rat.  Under  this  category  we  have  to  include  the 
struggles  of  rival  males,  as  among  stags,  and  the 
strange  struggles  of  the  sexes,  as  in  spiders. 

(2)  It  may  be  between  organisms  not  nearly 
related,  as  between  carnivores  and  herbivores, 
between  plants  and  snails. 

(3)  It  may  be  between  organisms  and  the  inani- 
mate environment,  as  between  birds  and  the  win- 
ter— a  form  of  struggle  entirely  non-competitive. 

Or,  again,  we  may  distinguish  different  forms 
of  the  struggle  according  to  what  is  achieved  by  it 
— survival  from  immediate  death,  a  longer  life,  a 
more  comfortable  life,  a  larger  family,  a  more  suc- 
cessful family,  and  so  on. 

In  regard  to  the  process  of  elimination,  we  must 
carefully  notice  that  it  does  not  necessarily  mean 
that  those  eliminated  come  at  once  to  a  violent 
end,  as  when  locust  devours  locust,  or  the  cold  deci- 
mates the  birds  in  a  single  night;  it  often  means 
simply  that  the  less  fit  die  before  the  average  time, 
or  are  less  successful  than  their  neighbors  in  rear- 
ing progeny.  But  whether  the  eliminative  process 
be  quick  or  slow,  gentle  or  severe,  competitive  or 
environmental  the  result  is  the  same,  that  the 
relatively  more  fit  tend  to  survive.  We  need  not 
waste  time  in  combating  the  absurd  misunder- 
standing that  fittest  means  best  or  highest  accord- 
ing to  any  evolutionary  standard;  it  only  means 
fittest  relatively  to  given  conditions.  The  tape- 


166  The  Bible  of  Nature 

worm  is  not  exactly  what  one  would  call  a  noble 
animal,  but  after  it  gets  settled  down  in  its  host 
it  is  remarkably  well  adapted  to  its  own  peculiar 
conditions  of  material  well-being.  The  golden 
eagle  is  a  much  finer  creature  than,  say,  the  mi- 
crobe of  grouse  disease;  but,  as  things  are,  the 
chances  of  the  golden  eagle's  survival  in  Britain 
are  much  less  than  those  of  the  grouse-microbe. 

There  are  some  naturalists  who  will  not  accept 
the  interpretation  of  the  struggle  for  existence 
which  has  been  outlined  above,  which  seems  on  the 
whole  consistent  with  Darwin's.  Thus  Professor 
Ray  Lankester  writes,  it  seems  to  us  unwarrant- 
ably, "In  Nature's  struggle  for  existence,  death, 
immediate  obliteration,  is  the  fate  of  the  van- 
quished." "The  struggle  between  species  is  by 
no  means  universal,  but  in  fact  very  rare.  The 
preying  of  one  species  on  another  is  a  moderated 
affair  of  balance  and  adjustment  which  may  be 
described  rather  as  an  accommodation  than  a 
struggle."  "  The  *  struggle  for  existence,'  to  which 
Darwin  assigned  importance,  is  not  a  struggle  be- 
tween species,  but  one  between  closely  similar 
members  of  the  same  species."  ("The  Kingdom 
of  Man,"  1907.)  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Darwin 
assigned  importance  to  many  different  forms  of 
the  struggle  for  existence.  Even  when  we  take 
his  paragraph  headed,  "Struggle  for  life  most  se- 
vere between  individuals  and  variations  of  the 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  167 

same  species;  often  severe  between  species  of  the 
same  genus,"  we  find  only  five  illustrations,  and 
these  are  not  altogether  convincing. 

Isolation. — Besides  selection  we  can  discern  an- 
other directive  factor — what  we  call  Isolation. 
One  of  the  early  competent  critics  of  Darwin's 
theory  of  Natural  Selection,  Professor  Fleming 
Jenkins,  emphasized  the  difficulty  that  variations 
of  small  amount  and  sparse  occurrence  would  tend 
to  be  swamped  out  by  intercrossing.  In  artificial 
selection,  the  breeder  takes  measures  to  prevent 
this  by  removing  unsuitable  forms  and  by  delib- 
erately pairing  similar  and  suitable  mates;  but 
what  in  Nature  corresponds  to  the  breeder  ?  There 
are  several  ways  of  meeting  this  criticism,  but  the 
one  that  concerns  us  at  present  is  the  theory  of 
isolation,  worked  out  by  the  late  Dr.  Romanes,  by 
Mr.  Gulick,  and  others.  Attention  is  directed  to 
the  great  variety  of  ways  in  which,  in  the  course  of 
nature,  the  range  of  intercrossing  is  restricted — 
for  instance,  by  geographical  barriers,  by  differ- 
ences of  habit,  by  likes  and  dislikes,  which  re- 
sult in  assortive  mating,  by  reproductive  vari- 
ations which  cause  mutual  sterility  between  two 
sections  of  a  species  living  on  a  common  area, 
and  so  on.  According  to  Romanes,  "without 
isolation,  or  the  prevention  of  free  intercrossing, 
organic  evolution  is  in  no  case  possible."  It  has 
to  be  confessed,  however,  that  the  body  of  facts 


168  The  Bible  of  Nature 

in  illustration  of  this  thesis  is  still  unsatisfactorily 
small,  though  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  each 
valley  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  seems  to  have  its 
own  particular  species  of  snail,  just  as  almost 
every  mammal  has  its  own  peculiar  parasites. 

An  interesting  corollary  to  the  theory  of  isola- 
tion has  been  pointed  out  by  Professor  Cossar 
Ewart.  Breeding  within  a  narrow  range  often 
occurs  in  nature  as  the  result  of  geographical  or 
other  barriers.  In  artificial  conditions,  this  in- 
breeding often  results  in  the  development  of  what 
is  called  prepotency.  This  means  that  certain 
forms  have  an  unusual  power  of  transmitting  their 
peculiarities,  even  when  mated  with  dissimilar 
forms.  In  other  words,  certain  variations  have  a 
strong  power  of  hereditary  persistence.  There- 
fore, wherever  through  inbreeding  (which  im- 
plies isolation)  prepotency  has  developed,  there  is 
no  difficulty  in  understanding  that  even  a  small 
idiosyncrasy  may  come  to  stay.  Reibmayr  has 
developed  the  interesting  thesis  that  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  a  successful  human  stock  there  must  be  an 
alternation  of  long  periods  of  inbreeding,  in  which 
characters  are  fixed  and  prepotency  developed,  and 
periods  of  outbreeding,  in  which  fresh  blood  is  intro- 
duced and  the  possibility  of  new  departures  secured. 

General  Retrospect. — Nature,  Goethe  said,  is  a 
book  whose  every  page  is  full  of  import,  and  that 
is  particularly  true  of  the  pages  of  the  history  of  the 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  169 

animate  world.  Here  the  general  trend  of  things  has 
been  progressive.  How  important  if  we  can  spell 
out  the  mechanism  of  progress !  In  this  connection 
we  venture  to  submit  some  general  considerations. 

A  Common  Error  as  to  Fortuitousness. — Many  have 
recoiled  from  a  theory  of  evolution  which  seemed 
to  rely  so  much  on  happy  chances  and  on  the  oc- 
casionally apt  ending  of  a  chapter  of  accidents. 
What  have  we  to  say  to  this  ? 

It  is  in  part  a  misunderstanding  of  words. 
When  an  evolutionist  speaks  of  "fortuitous  varia- 
tions," he  means  that  he  is  ignorant  of  their  ante- 
cedent conditions.  Fluctuating  variations  can  be 
arranged  so  as  to  form  a  curve — the  curve  of  the 
frequency  of  error — the  curve  which  we  get  when 
we  plot  out  measured  results  depending  on  a  num- 
ber of  variable  conditions.  But  the  mere  fact  that 
we  can  make  the  curve  shows  a  certain  orderliness 
of  distribution.  Chance  is  a  most  orderly  phe- 
nomenon. Furthermore,  there  is  often  marked 
defmiteness  in  continuous  variation,  it  accumulates 
generation  after  generation,  one  organ  increases, 
another  dwindles.  Furthermore,  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  any  big  step  has  been  made  by 
the  accumulation  of  minute  fluctuations;  it  is  prob- 
able that  discontinuous  variations  or  mutations 
have  counted  for  much,  and  they  are  no  more  ac- 
cidental than  sudden  growth  is.  Furthermore, 
while  there  have  been  catastrophes  in  the  course  of 


170  The  Bible  of  Nature 

nature,  the  only  kind  of  elimination  that  counts  in 
evolution  is  discriminate  elimination,  and  what  is 
discriminable  cannot  be  fortuitous. 

There  seems  to  be  nothing  but  misunderstand- 
ing in  the  allegation  that  the  evolutionist  interpre- 
tation relies  on  fortuitousness.  If  a  cone  falls  from 
the  fir  tree  under  which  we  are  sitting  and  kills 
a  spider  creeping  on  the  ground,  we  say  that  it  is 
quite  fortuitous  that  cone  and  spider  happen  to 
come  together  at  the  same  time  in  the  same  place. 
But  progress  in  Nature  does  not  depend  on  this 
sort  of  phenomenon.  The  elimination  that  counts 
is  discriminate  elimination. 

But  are  not  the  variations  that  count  fortuitous  ? 
It  is  difficult  to  see  much  meaning  in  the  term  ex- 
cept that  we  are  very  ignorant  of  the  antecedent 
conditions.  Whether  we  believe  that  discon- 
tinuous mutations  are  of  most  moment,  or  that  the 
fluctuations  Darwin  relied  on  are  more  important, 
whether  we  believe  that  variation  is  due  to  the 
stimulus  of  the  variable  body  on  the  complex  germ- 
plasm  or  to  a  germinal  struggle  of  hereditary  items, 
there  is  no  good  reason  for  calling  them  fortuitous. 
We  must  get  away  from  the  wooden  way  of  think- 
ing of  variations  as  if  they  were  so  many  coins 
which  the  organism  took  out  of  its  pockets  and 
staked  in  the  game  of  life.  Variations  are  always 
expressions  of  the  creature's  individuality,  of  its 
creative  genius;  they  correspond  to  the  poet's 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  171 

fancies  and  the  philosopher's  hypotheses;  they 
represent  organic  imagination. 

Preciousness  of  Individuality. — An  evolutionary 
lesson  which  he  who  runs  may  read  concerns  the 
preciousness  of  individuality.  Variations  supply 
the  raw  material  of  progress,  and  variations  spell 
individuality.  This  is  one  of  the  biological  com- 
monplaces which  in  human  affairs  we  persistently 
ignore.  In  the  educational  mill — whether  of 
school  or  of  college — and  in  our  inexorable  social 
criticism,  how  systematically  we  pick  off  the  buds 
of  individuality — idiosyncrasies  and  crankiness  we 
say — spoiling  how  many  flowers.  It  is  said  that 
we  do  this  to  prevent  failures  and  criminals,  but  are 
we  very  successful  in  this  prevention  ?  How  many 
of  both  do  we  make  by  repressing  individuality? 

Importance  of  Struggle  and  Endeavour. — If  there  is 
one  thing  that  the  story  of  organic  evolution 
teaches  us  more  than  another,  it  is  the  necessity 
of  struggle  or  of  endeavour.  Everywhere  she  pro- 
nounces judgment  on  slackness,  on  the  unlit  lamp 
and  the  ungirt  loin.  Meredith  writes  of  Nature's 
sifting: 

"Behold  the  life  of  ease,  it  drifts, 
The  sharpened  life  commands  its  course; 
She  winnows,  winnows  roughly,  sifts 
To  dip  her  chosen  in  her  source. 
Contention  is  the  vital  force 
Whence  pluck  they  brain,  her  prize  of  gifts." 


172  The  Bible  of  Nature 

More  than  Competitive  Struggle.—  At  the  same  time, 
we  libel  nature's  method  if  we  picture  it  as  com- 
parable to  that  of  a  gladiatorial  show  with  its  un- 
compromising cry  Fa?  victis;  if  we  say  that  her 
only  word  is  ruthless  self-assertion,  every  one  for 
himself  and  extinction  take  the  hindmost;  if  we 
see  only  a  thrusting  aside  and  treading  down  of 
competitors. 

Tennyson,  who  held  such  a  clear  mirror  to 
Nature,  writes: 

"  For  Nature  is  one  with  rapine,  a  harm  no  preacher  can 

heal, 
The  may-fly  is  torn  by  the  swallow,  the  sparrow  spear'd 

by  the  strike, 

And  the  whole  little  wood  where  I  sit  is  a  world  of  plunder 
and  prey." 

But  this  is  only  one  side  of  the  picture. 

It  appears  to  us  that  the  facts  of  mutual  aid,  of 
social  life,  of  kin-sympathy  and  of  parental  care 
suffice  to  show  that  Huxley  was  in  error  in  saying 
that  "the  cosmic  process  has  no  sort  of  relation 
to  moral  ends."  This  is  so  important  that  we 
must  consider  the  matter  more  fully. 

Ethical  Aspect  of  Organic  Evolution. — For  untold 
ages  the  drama  of  organic  evolution  has  been  in 
progress,  cast  succeeding  cast  without  any  one 
having  a  real  grasp  of  the  plot.  In  comparatively 
recent  times  man,  though  busy  on  the  stage,  has 
become  a  calm  spectator.  Is  it  not  significant  of 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  173 

his  critical  spirit  that  he  has  come  to  doubt  whether 
the  great  drama  is  a  moral  spectacle  ? 

Darwin  painted  a  picture  of  nature  which  has 
impressed  itself  now  on  two  generations  of  stu- 
dents. Every  competent  judge  recognizes  its 
strength  and  insight,  but  it  is  anti-Darwinian  to  call 
it  finished  or  perfect.  The  most  prominent  fea- 
tures which  it  brought  out  were — that  flux  of  form 
which  we  call  variation,  the  tendency  of  the  river 
of  life  to  overflow  its  banks,  the  ceaseless  struggle 
for  existence,  the  discriminate  elimination  which 
results,  and  the  subtle  interrelations  and  adapta- 
tions of  the  web  of  life.  It  is  with  the  struggle  for 
existence  that  we  have  now  especially  to  deal. 

Darwin  pointed  out  that  the  phrase  "struggle 
for  existence"  was  to  be  taken  in  a  wide  and  meta- 
phorical sense,  and  he  has  a  number  of  very  inter- 
esting saving  clauses.  But  the  general  perspective 
of  his  picture  is  clear,  and  leaves  us  with  the  im- 
pression of  a  sombre,  more  or  less  sanguinary, 
ceaseless  struggle.  We  remember  that  the  work 
of  Malthus  influenced  Darwin  (as  it  also  influ- 
enced Wallace  and  Spencer);  we  may  go  further 
and  recognize  some  truth  in  Geddes'  thesis  that 
science  is  a  social  phenomenon,  and  that  the  Dar- 
winian conception  was  in  part  an  unconscious  pro- 
jection on  nature  of  the  competitive  conditions  and 
competitive  creed  of  the  early  industrial  age.  A 
reproduction  of  the  picture  has  never  the  subtlety 


174  The  Bible  of  Nature 

of  the  original,  and  the  reproductions  of  the  Dar- 
winian picture  are  often  rather  hard  and  ugly 
prints.  Nature  is  represented  as  a  continuous 
Waterloo,  as  an  endless  gladiatorial  show,  as  a 
dismal  cockpit.  And  popularizers  apart,  leaders 
of  thought  like  Huxley,  have  strengthened  this 
impression,  which  is,  to  say  the  least,  one-sided. 

Attempt  at  a  Correction  of  the  Ultra-Darwinian 
Picture. — Let  us  make  a  curve  of  the  ascent  of 
Vertebrates  from  water  to  dry  land,  and  mark  the 
position  of  the  leading  types  according  to  the  de- 
gree of  their  brain-development  (which  is  gener- 
ally a  reliable  index  of  structural  progress).  As 
the  curve  ascends,  we  find  that  the  plummet  of 
marital  affection,  the  intensity  of  parental  care, 
the  expression  of  the  gentler  emotions,  are  all  on  the 
increase.  The  natural  conditions  in  which  each 
is  said  to  be  for  himself,  are  evidently  not  antago- 
nistic to  the  evolution  of  other-regarding  behaviour. 

The  non-gregarious  mammals  are  outnumbered 
by  those  that  are  social ;  the  most  secure,  successful, 
and  highly  gifted  birds  are  probably  the  rooks,  the 
cranes,  and  the  parrots — also  among  the  most  gre- 
garious; the  monkeys — most  of  which  are  a  feeble 
folk — are  strong  in  their  sociality.  It  is  not  then 
to  self-assertiveness  alone  that  Nature  gives  her 
sanction  of  survival. 

When  we  take  a  survey  of  the  course  of  organic 
nature  we  see  hunger — self-assertion — competi- 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  175 

tion — a  nutritive  struggle  of  variable  intensity. 
But  organisms  are  also  reproductive,  they  have 
species-regarding  activities,  altruistic  impulses. 
The  careful  brooding  mother-bird  is  de  facto  al- 
truistic. Hence,  in  part,  a  reproductive  struggle, 
in  which  love  may  be  stronger  than  hunger — a 
reproductive  factor  in  evolution  which  is  not  wholly 
concerned  with  self-gratification,  but  with  self- 
sacrifice  as  well. 

The  important  points  are  (1)  that  many  of  the 
big  lifts  in  animal  evolution,  such  as  the  origin  of 
multicellular  organisms  or  the  origin  of  the  mam- 
malian type,  imply  the  success  of  variations  which 
cannot  be  regarded  as  of  immediate  individual 
advantage;  (2)  in  the  process  of  selection  the  pre- 
mium on  teeth  and  claws,  or  beaks  and  talons,  is  no 
greater  than  that  on  "the  milk  of  animal  kind- 
ness" and  the  warmth  of  the  maternal  heart; 
(3)  the  struggle  for  existence  is  often  a  quiet  en- 
deavour after  well  being.  There  is  much  gregari- 
ousness,  there  are  many  peaceful  solutions  of 
difficulty,  there  is  frequent  combination  for  de- 
fence and  attack,  there  is  a  strong  feeling  of  kin- 
ship, there  is  frequent  cooperation  and  mutual 
aid.  The  world,  Diderot  says,  is  the  abode  of  the 
strong;  but  it  is  also  the  home  of  the  loving.1 

1  We  do  not  quote  Nietzsche  as  an  authority,  but  it  is 
interesting  that  one  who  preached  the  gospel  of  the 
strong,  and  regarded  the  real  thing  in  Nature  as  the 


176  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Just  as  in  the  individual  body  we  recognize  the 
cooperation  of  organs  as  well  as  the  struggle  of 
parts,  so  in  the  great  world  of  organisms  we  must 
recognize  not  only  competition  but  cooperation, 
not  only  struggle  but  mutual  aid,  if  we  would  draw 
any  sane  conclusion  as  to  the  ethical  import  of  the 
great  drama.  As  against  Huxley's  conclusion 
that  the  course  of  organic  evolution — through 
"a  materialized  logical  process" — has  no  ethical 
suggestion  except  that  man  must  try  to  go  on  the 
opposite  tack,  it  is  interesting  to  place  Geddes1 
conclusion  that  "Nature  is  a  materialized  ethical 
process,"  meaning  by  this  mainly  that  some  of  the 
greatest  steps  in  organic  progress  are  interpretable 
as  subordinations  of  the  nutritive  and  self-regarding 
to  the  reproductive  and  species-regarding  activities. 

We  must,  of  course,  be  careful  not  to  pass  from 
one  anthropomorphism  to  another.  We  must  be 
careful  not  to  read  the  man  into  the  beast,  still  less 
into  the  plant.  Many  animals  exhibit  self-sacri- 
fice in  the  sense  that  they  exert  themselves  often 
to  their  own  detriment  on  behalf  of  their  young, 
but  this  is  not  done  out  of  a  sense  of  duty  any  more 

"Will  to  Rule,"  should  have — most  impudently,  of  course 
— described  Darwin  as  "one  of  those  mediocre  English- 
men who  have  coarsened  the  mind  of  Europe,"  "an  intel- 
lectual plebeian,  like  all  his  nation,"  and  should  have  called 
the  struggle  for  existence  "an  incredibly  one-sided  doc- 
trine," as  a  description  of  the  normal  aspect  of  life  in 
nature, 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  177 

than  in  the  case  of  a  human  mother.  In  many 
cases,  among  insects,  the  mothers  never  see  the 
young  for  which  they  labour.  The  mother  mam- 
mal has  no  prevision  of  the  welfare  of  the  species, 
no  control  of  her  behaviour  in  reference  to  an  ideal 
standard.  Good  she  is,  but  not  moral.  None 
the  less,  there  is  objective  self-sacrifice,  and  there 
is  so  much  of  it  and  of  kindred  phenomena  that 
we  must  in  accuracy  correct  the  picture  of  Nature 
"all  red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  ravine." 

It  is  also  evident  that  all  the  other-regarding 
activities  pay,  and  are  the  subjects  of  selective  di- 
rection. The  selection-formula  which  applies  to 
the  swiftness  of  the  fox  and  the  correlate  swiftness 
of  the  hare,  applies  also  to  the  patient  brooding 
of  birds  and  the  carefulness  of  the  mammalian 
mother.  Yet  it  seems  absurd  to  deny  that  these 
mothers  love  their  children,  or  to  assert  that  phys- 
ical motives  saturate  their  behaviour.  Is  there  not 
then  some  shifting  of  the  theory's  centre  of  gravity 
when  we  expressly  allow  that  love  pays?  The 
whole  law  and  gospel  of  Nature  is  not  to  be 
summed  up  as  "Upstairs  on  your  neighbour's 
shoulders,  living  or  dead,  each  for  himself  in  the 
scrimmage  and  elimination  take  the  hindmost." 
On  a  priori  grounds  it  seems  unlikely  that  struggle 
is  the  only  word  Nature  has  to  say  to  man,  or 
that  what  we  recognize  as  one  of  the  great  laws 
of  moral  development — self-realization  in  self- 


178  The  Bible  of  Nature 

sacrifice — should  have  no  far-off  counterpart  in 
the  rest  of  creation.  We  have  hinted  at  a  posteri- 
ori reasons  for  the  belief  that  in  this  sense  there 
are  spiritual  laws  in  the  natural  world,  but  what 
we  have  said  must  be  followed  up  by  reference 
to  such  contributions  to  the  subject  as  Kropotkin's 
"Mutual  Aid." 

It  may  perhaps  be  objected  that  parasitism  is  a 
frequent  phenomenon  among  animals,  and  has 
Nature's  sanction  of  survival  and  success.  The 
parasites  are  indeed  legion;  they  attain  conditions 
of  "complete  material  well-being";  in  spite  of  the 
enormous  odds  against  them,  involved  in  their 
usually  intricate  life-histories,  full  of  hazardous 
vicissitudes,  they  hold  their  own.  Fit  for  certain 
conditions,  they  survive,  and  survive  uncommonly 
well.  All  this  is  true,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  para- 
sites are  stamped  with  the  stigmata  of  degeneracy. 

The  reason  why  we  are  so  much  concerned  with 
getting  away  from  an  ultra-Darwinian  picture  of 
Nature  is  not  merely  because  it  seems  to  us  inac- 
curate, but  because  the  libellous  conception  pro- 
jected from  human  society  upon  Nature  has  been 
brought  back  again  to  society  as  a  guide  and 
sanction  of  human  conduct,  even  as  an  ethical  and 
political  ideal. 

"The  conception  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
it  has  been  said,  comes  back  to  the  explanation  of 
human  society  with  all  the  added  force  of  its  tri- 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  179 

umph  in  the  solution  of  the  greatest  question  with 
which  natural  science  has  hitherto  successfully 
dealt." 

Let  be,  they  say,  let  nature  alone,  let  them  fight 
it  out.  Through  struggle  all  progress  has  come, 
contention  is  the  world's  vital  force,  "  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,"  don't  you  know,  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Let  be,  let  be.  The  law  of  nature  is 
every  one  for  himself;  there  is  a  Hobbesian  war 
of  each  against  all;  all  creatures  are  Ishmaelites; 
and  are  not  the  results  fair  to  see  ? 

Even  if  this  were  so,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  man, 
conscious  of  all,  and  in  a  sense  above  all,  should 
fold  his  hands  and  say  that  Nature's  method  is  good 
enough  for  him.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Huxley's  note- 
worthy thesis  was  that  ethical  progress  for  man 
depends  upon  his  combating  the  cosmic  process, 
pitting  his  microcosm  against  the  macrocosm. 

What  we  have  been  trying  to  show,  however, 
is  that  Nature  has  more  to  say  than  "Every  one 
for  himself."  There  has  been  a  selection  of  the 
other-regarding,  of  the  self-sacrificing,  of  the 
gentle,  of  the  loving. 

If  we  wish  to  draw  any  ethical  deduction  from 
the  course  of  organic  evolution,  we  must  have  all 
the  facts  before  us.  We  must  not  make  idols  of 
phrases,  or  rest  content  with  partial  pictures, 
or  with  projecting  our  social  creed  on  Nature;  we 
must  go  to  Nature  itself.  When  we  do  so,  we 


180  The  Bible  of  Nature 

find  indeed  that  there  is  often  competition  to  the 
death,  much  pain  and  suffering,  very  intense  strug- 
gle for  food  and  foothold.  We  may  echo  Darwin's 
sad  words  that  the  world  is  "too  full  of  misery." 
We  may  say  with  Huxley  that  suffering,  "this 
baleful  product  of  evolution,  increases  in  quantity 
and  in  intensity  with  advancing  grades  of  animal 
organization  until  it  attains  its  highest  level  in 
man."  But  this  is  not  all.  We  see  the  success  of 
self-sacrifice,  the  rewards  of  love,  the  stability  of 
societies,  and  no  end  of  joie  de  vivre.  We  find 
that  the  phrase  struggle  for  existence  has  indeed 
to  be  used  in  a  wide  and  metaphorical  sense,  that 
it  is  descriptive  of  the  course  of  nature  in  which 
the  multiplication  of  organisms  and  the  natural 
limitations  put  to  their  desires  for  food,  foothold, 
comfort  and  mates,  bring  about  a  state  of  affairs 
in  which  a  premium  is  put  on  advantageous  vari- 
ations of  whatever  kind,  and  in  which  an  elimina- 
tion more  rapid  than  natural  death,  or  a  lessening 
of  the  normal  number  and  success  of  the  family, 
handicaps  those  which  are  relatively  unfit. 

It  seems  important  that  we  should  try  to  make 
up  our  minds  whether  Huxley's  picture  of  the 
course  of  animate  nature  is  adequate.  Must  we 
not  recognize  that  progress  depends  on  much  more 
than  a  squabble  around  the  platter;  that  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  is  far  more  than  an  internecine 
struggle  at  the  margin  of  subsistence,  that  it  in- 


The  Evolution  of  Organisms  181 

eludes  all  the  multitudinous  efforts  for  self  and 
others  between  the  poles  of  love  and  hunger;  that 
self-sacrifice  and  love  are  factors  in  evolution  as 
well  as  self-assertion  and  death;  that  existence  for 
many  an  animal  means  the  well-being  of  a  socially- 
bound  or  kin-bound  creature  in  a  social  environ- 
ment; that  egoism  is  not  satisfied  until  it  becomes 
altruistic  ? 

Emotional  Value  of  the  Evolutionary  Picture. — 
Finally,  as  to  the  aesthetic  value  of  the  evolution- 
ary picture,  let  us  recall  Darwin's  well-known 
words:  "To  my  mind  it  accords  better  with  what 
we  know  of  the  laws  impressed  on  matter  by  the 
Creator,  that  the  production  and  extinction  of  the 
past  and  present  inhabitants  of  the  world  should 
have  been  due  to  secondary  causes,  like  those  de- 
termining the  birth  and  death  of  an  individual. 
When  I  view  all  beings,  not  as  special  creations, 
but  as  lineal  descendants  of  some  few  beings  who 
lived  before  the  first  bed  of  the  Silurian  was  de- 
posited, they  seem  to  me  to  become  ennobled." 

"There  is  a  grandeur  in  this  view  of  life,  with  its 
several  powers  having  been  originally  breathed  by 
the  Creator  into  a  few  forms  or  into  one,  and  that 
while  this  planet  has  gone  cycling  on,  according  to 
the  fixed  law  of  gravity,  from  so  simple  a  beginning 
endless  forms  most  beautiful  and  most  wonderful 
have  been  and  are  being  evolved." 


V 
MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE 


V 

MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE 

Man's  Zoological  Position  and  His  Distinctive  Pe- 
culiarities.— Science  speaks  with  no  uncertain  voice 
regarding  man's  position  among  other  living 
creatures.  Zoologically  regarded,  Man  belongs 
to  a  special  family  in  that  order  of  Mammals  which 
we  call  Primates,  which  includes  marmosets, 
American  Monkeys,  Old  World  Monkeys,  and 
Anthropoid  Apes.  Of  his  structural  resemblance 
to  the  Anthropoid  Apes  in  particular  there  is  not  a 
shadow  of  doubt.  It  is  long  since  Sir  Richard 
Owen,  who  was  conservative  on  the  subject,  ad- 
mitted the  "all-pervading  similitude  of  structure." 
On  the  other  hand,  man  is  a  very  distinctive  type. 
He  alone,  after  his  infancy  is  past,  walks  thorough- 
ly erect.  His  head  is  weighted  with  a  heavy  brain, 
but  it  does  not  droop  forward.  With  his  upright 
attitude,  his  command  of  vocal  mechanism  is  per- 
haps in  part  connected.  He  plants  the  soles  of  his 
feet  flat  on  the  ground  and  he  has  a  better  heel  than 
the  monkeys  have.  Comparing  his  head  with  that 
of  the  anthropoid  apes,  we  notice  the  bigger  fore- 
head, the  less  protrusive  face,  the  smaller  cheek- 
bones and  eye-brow  ridges,  the  absence  of  cranial 
185 


186  The  Bible  of  Nature 

crests,  the  early  disappearance  of  the  junction  be- 
tween premaxilla  and  maxilla,  the  well-marked 
chin,  the  more  uniform  teeth  forming  an  uninter- 
rupted horseshoe-shaped  series  without  prominent 
canines,  and  above  all  the  massive  brain  which 
may  be  three  times  the  weight  of  a  gorilla's.  There 
is  no  need  to  go  into  details,  which  have  been 
authoritatively  stated  so  often.  The  point  is,  that 
while  man  is  distinctive  from  his  heel  to  his  chin, 
from  his  big  toe  to  his  forehead,  there  is,  as  far  as 
structure  is  concerned,  much  less  difference  be- 
tween man  and  gorilla  than  there  is  between 
gorilla  and  marmoset.  Every  one  now  admits  that 
the  distinctiveness  of  man  from  his  nearest  allies 
depends  not  on  anatomical  peculiarities,  important 
as  they  are,  but  on  his  powers,  especially  on  his 
powers  of  rational  discourse,  of  building  up  gen- 
eral ideas,  and  of  guiding  his  conduct  by  ideals. 
Some  other  creatures  have  words,  but  man  alone 
has  language — the  power  of  expressing  a  judg- 
ment— which  is  Logos.  Many  other  creatures 
have  intelligence,  which  we  can  give  a  plausible 
account  of  in  terms  of  perceptual  inference,  but 
man  seems  to  stand  alone  in  having  reason  or  the 
power  of  conceptual  inference.  Many  other 
creatures  exhibit  intelligent  behaviour,  which  in  a 
few  cases  may  be  controlled  with  reference  to  an 
objective  end,  as  when  the  beavers  dig  a  canal 
through  an  island  in  the  river;  but,  so  far  as  we 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  187 

know,  it  is  only  in  man  that  behaviour  rises  into 
ethical  conduct.  Many  animals  are  delightfully 
good,  but  only  man  is  moral. 

Does  Resemblance  Mean  Relationship  ? — But  ad- 
mitting that  man,  distinctive  as  he  is,  must  be  re- 
garded as  anatomically  akin  to  the  anthropoid 
apes,  is  it  necessary  to  go  further  and  admit  that 
the  homologies  spell  blood-relationship?  Does 
the  "all-pervading  similitude"  imply  affiliation? 
Has  there  been  an  ascent  of  Man  from  a  Simian 
stock?  The  practically  unanimous  scientific  an- 
swer is  "  Yes."  Before  considering  this  answer,  let 
us  ask  what  other  interpretations  are  in  the  field. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  Man  is  "The  Great 
Exception,"  that  while  all  other  creatures  have  had 
a  natural  evolution,  Man  was  specially  created, 
that  is  to  say,  that  he  arose  in  a  manner  beyond 
the  ken  of  science.  If  this  answer  thoroughly 
satisfies  any  one  and  is  really  useful  to  him,  he 
should  stick  to  it.  It  is  not  for  science  to  say  that 
it  is  impossible,  for  the  only  kind  of  impossibility 
which  science  has  to  protest  against  is  a  contra- 
diction in  terms.  The  strength  of  the  position 
that  Man  is  the  great  exception,  with  a  peculiarly 
supernatural  origin,  lies  positively  in  the  fact  that 
Man  at  his  best  is  a  very  wonderful  creature,  and 
that  even  at  his  worst  he  is  considerably  different 
from  an  animal.  It  is  also  strengthened  negatively 
by  the  fact  that  Man's  origin  is  wrapped  in  ob- 


188  The  Bible  of  Nature 

scurity,  and  that  the  provisional  hypothetical  his- 
tory, which  zoologists  and  anthropologists  have 
tried  to  construct,  leaves  much  to  be  desired.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  drawbacks  to  the  theory  are, 
that  it  dogmatically  sets  a  limit  to  the  unravelling 
power  of  science,  that  it  insinuates  a  dualism  into 
our  scientific  conception  of  history,  and  that  it 
leaves  us  with  the  puzzle  of  the  "all-pervading 
similitude"  between  Man  and  the  anthropoids. 
In  trying  to  save  Man's  dignity,  it  makes  him  a 
conundrum. 

A  somewhat  subtler  view,  which  finds  favour 
with  many,  suggests  that  while  Man  as  an  animal 
organism  was  evolved,  he  received  in  addition  to 
his  natural  inheritance  a  special  supernatural  en- 
dowment. As  an  organism  he  sprang  from  the 
very  dust,  but  he  also  received  a  breath  of  divine 
life  which  nature  could  not  give,  which  nature  can- 
not take  away.  "  There  is  surely,"  said  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  "a  piece  of  divinity  in  us;  some- 
thing that  was  before  the  elements,  and  owes  no 
homage  unto  the  sun."  According  to  Dr.  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace,  the  doyen  of  evolutionists,  the 
Nestor  of  the  Darwinian  camp,  the  facts  of  Man's 
higher  nature  compel  us  to  postulate  a  special 
"spiritual  influx,"  comparable  to  that  which  inter- 
vened when  living  organisms  first  appeared  and 
when  consciousness  began.  If  any  one  finds  this 
view  thoroughly  satisfactory  and  really  useful,  he 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  189 

should  stick  to  it.  From  our  point  of  view  it  seems 
premature  and  unnecessary.  It  abandons  the 
scientific  mode  of  procedure  while  the  inquiry  is 
still  young,  and  the  idea  of  spiritual  influxes  inter- 
vening now  and  again  to  help  natural  evolution 
over  difficult  stiles  suggests  that  we  have  to  do 
with  two  worlds  and  not  with  only  one. 

Ascent  of  Man. — But  let  us  now  turn  to  the 
scientific  outlook.  The  arguments  by  which  Dar- 
win and  others  have  sought  to  show  that  Man 
arose  from  an  ancestral  type  common  to  him  and 
to  the  higher  apes,  are  logically  the  same  as  those 
used  to  substantiate  the  general  doctrine  of  de- 
scent— that  the  present  is  the  child  of  the  past  and 
the  parent  of  the  future.  The  "  Descent  of  Man  " 
is  an  expansion  of  a  chapter  in  the  "Origin  of 
Species."  The  arguments  may  be  briefly  sum- 
marized : 

(1)  Physiological. — The  bodily  life  of  Man  is 
very  like  that  of  his  presumed  allies.     Men  and 
monkeys  are  subject  to  similar  diseases.    Various 
human  traits  of  gesture  and  expression  are  paral- 
leled among  the  brutes.     Friedenthal's  curious 
physiological    method    of   demonstrating    blood- 
relationship  by  similarity  in  the  blood  reactions 
holds  good. 

(2)  Morphological. — The  structure  of  Man  is 
very  like  that  of  the  anthropoid  apes.     He  is  dis- 
tinctive, but  none  of  his  anatomical  distinctions, 


190  The  Bible  of  Nature 

except  that  of  a  large  and  heavy  brain,  are  very 
momentous.  There  are  about  eighty  vestigial 
structures  in  his  muscular,  skeletal,  and  other  sys- 
tems— a  large  museum  of  relics  which  he  carries 
about  with  him,  enigmatical  except  in  the  light  of 
the  past. 

(3)  Historical. — Certainties  in  regard  to  re- 
mains of  primitive  man  are  few,  but  some  of  the 
early  skulls  are  nearer  the  Simian  type  than  those 
normal  to-day.  Connecting  links  are  missing, 
but  fragments  like  those  of  Pithecanthropus  are 
suggestive  if  not  convincing.  Sometimes,  more- 
over, an  abnormal  type  is  born  which  seems  to 
hark  back  in  some  of  its  features  to  a  pre-human 
stage.  And  again  we  find  in  Man's  individual  de- 
velopment stages  which  may  be  interpreted  as  in 
a  general  way  recapitulative  of  presumed  ancestral 
history. 

It  goes  almost  without  saying  that  we  cannot  re- 
gard these  evidences  of  Man's  pedigree  as  demon- 
strative. The  evidences  of  evolution  never  are. 
We  accept  the  doctrine  of  descent  because  it  is 
our  only  scientific  modal  interpretation  of  the  past, 
because  it  makes  both  past  and  present  luminous 
and  coherent,  because  all  the  facts  point  to  it  as  a 
rational  formula,  and  because  we  know  of  nothing 
that  can  be  said  to  contradict  it.  If  the  doctrine 
of  descent  is  true  for  other  organisms,  it  is  likely 
to  be  true  for  Man  as  well. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  191 

The  Difficulty  of  the  Problem  of  the  Ascent  of  Man. — 
It  must  be  admitted  that  the  problem  remains  full 
of  difficulties.  We  do  not  know  how  Man  arose, 
or  whence  he  came,  or  when  he  began,  or  where 
his  first  home  was;  in  short  we  are  in  a  deplorable 
state  of  ignorance  on  the  whole  subject.  But  con- 
sider for  a  little  each  of  these  points,  taking  them 
in  reverse  order. 

The  Garden  of  Eden  is  not  yet  known  to  geog- 
raphers. We  have  only  speculations  as  to  the 
cradle  of  the  human  race.  We  may  venture  on 
negative  statements,  such  as  that  it  could  not  have 
been  in  the  New  World,  but  the  fewer  positive 
statements  we  make,  the  better. 

As  to  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  men  lived  in  Europe  at  a  time  when  mam- 
moth and  rhinoceros,  hysena  and  lion,  frequented 
these  parts.  From  the  situations  in  which  palaeo- 
lithic implements  have  been  found,  it  is  inferred 
that  these  must  have  dropped  from  their  makers' 
hands  at  least  150,000  years  ago.  And  these  im- 
plements were  not  the  work  of  novices;  in  their 
well-finished  form  they  compare  favourably  with 
some  of  the  results  of  twentieth-century  handi- 
craft. But  ever  so  much  older  than  those  palseo- 
liths  are  the  eoliths.  They  probably  take  us  back 
to  300,000  years  ago. 

Another  line  of  argument  is  this.  It  is  certain 
that  Man  could  not  have  arisen  from  any  of  the 


192  The  Bible  of  Nature 

existing  anthropoid  apes;  it  is  a  vulgar  error  to  sup- 
pose that  scientific  interpreters  ever  made  any  such 
suggestion.  It  is  likely,  however,  that  Man  arose 
from  an  ancestral  stock  common  to  the  anthro- 
poid apes  and  to  him.  It  therefore  seems  justi- 
fiable to  date  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race  not 
later  than  the  time  when  the  anthropoid  apes  are 
known  to  have  been  established  as  a  distinct 
family.  This  takes  us  back  to  Miocene  ages, 
and  that  means  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
years  ago. 

Is  there  not  something  extraordinarily  impres- 
sive in  this  antiquity  of  our  race,  all  the  more  im- 
pressive when  we  see  that  it  is  lost  against  the 
background  of  the  immensely  greater  antiquity  of 
the  animal  world,  just  as  that  is  lost  against  the 
unthinkable  antiquity  of  the  earth  ?  To  those  who 
are  always  in  a  hurry  for  results,  as  they  put  their 
shoulders  to  the  wheel  of  the  cumbrous  wagon 
of  our  civilization,  is  there  not  some  lesson  simply 
in  the  time  the  past  journey  has  taken?  As 
Lowell  said,  we  must  "Learn  by  each  discovery 
how  to  wait." 

Man  as  a  Mutation. — As  to  the  actual  origin  of 
Man,  we  can  only  say  that  facts  point  to  his  natural 
evolution  from  an  ancestral  stock  common  to  him 
and  to  the  anthropoid  apes.  He  probably  arose 
by  a  mutation,  that  is  to  say,  by  a  discontinuous 
variation  of  considerable  magnitude.  From  the 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  193 

researches  of  De  Vries,  Bateson,  and  others,  we 
know  that  discontinuous  (or  as  Galton  called  them 
"transilient")  variations  often  occur.  They  rep- 
resent sudden  and  brusque  emergences  of  new 
constitutional  patterns,  and  they  often  show  great 
stability,  i.  e.,  they  tend  to  breed  true.  The  birth 
of  a  genius  gives  us  a  hint  of  what  a  mutation  may 
mean,  but,  unfortunately,  geniuses  do  not  usually 
beget  geniuses.  They  do  not  breed  true  like 
De  Vries'  evening  primroses!  In  suggesting  that 
Man  arose  as  a  mutation,  we  do  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  he  sprang  suddenly  to  the  height  of 
his  dignity.  It  was  perhaps  more  like  what  we  see 
every  day  in  the  growth  of  a  child.  Probably  his 
origin  was  like  that  of  life  itself,  a  great  step  was 
suddenly  taken,  but  it  was  a  long  time  before  it 
began  to  tell.  It  may  seem  to  some  that  there  is 
not  much  to  choose  between  a  theory  of  Man's 
origin  by  a  hypothetical  mutation,  which  one 
would  not  understand  even  if  one  knew  it  had  oc- 
curred, and  a  theory  of  Man's  origin  by  special  cre- 
ation in  which  one  does  not  believe.  But  the  point 
is  really,  whether  we  do  or  do  not  regard  Man  as 
a  natural  and  predetermined  product  of  the  ante- 
cedent order  of  nature. 

Possible  Factors  in  the  Evolution  of  Man. — In  re- 
gard to  the  conditions  of  Man's  emergence  as  an 
anthropoid  genius,  we  can  only  speculate.  From 
what  we  know  of  men  and  monkeys,  it  seems  likely 


194  The  Bible  of  Nature 

that,  in  the  struggle  of  primitive  man,  wits  were 
of  more  avail  than  strength.  His  bodily  frame- 
work admitted  of  little  more  perfecting,  and  evo- 
lution "ever  climbing  after  some  ideal  good"  be- 
gan, metaphorically  speaking,  to  experiment  with 
the  brain.  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester  has  called  atten- 
tion to  the  interesting  fact  that  in  the  early 
Miocene  times  there  was  great  increase  in  brain- 
growth  in  several  animal  types,  perhaps  for  the 
same  reason,  that  anatomical  differentiation  of  the 
rest  of  the  system  could  not  profitably  go  much 
further.  One  of  the  first  types  to  shoot  ahead  in 
brain-development  was  the  elephant,  which  was 
already  sagacious  in  Eocene  times. 

Now  the  possession  of  a  big  brain  seems  to 
mean  great  " educability,"  i.e.,  power  of  storing 
and  profiting  by  experience.1  And  man's  enor- 
mous brain,  which  does  not  seem  to  have  increased 
greatly  in  bulk  since  Palaeolithic  times,  marked  a 
new  departure.  It  removed  him  head  and  shoul- 
ders above  the  rest  of  creation,  enabling  him  to 
pit  himself  against  Nature  in  a  degree  impossible 
to  less  endowed  organisms.  It  raised  him,  to  his 

1  "The  power  of  building  up  appropriate  cerebral 
mechanism  in  response  to  individual  experience,  or  what 
may  be  called  'educability,'  is  the  quality  which  charac- 
terizes the  larger  cerebrum,  and  is  that  which  has  led  to  its 
selection,  survival,  and  further  increase  in  volume." 
E.  Ray  Lankester,  "The  Kingdom  of  Man"  (London, 
1907). 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  195 

own  risk,  from  under  the  inexorable  sway  of  Nat- 
ural Selection. 

When  the  habits  of  walking  erect,  of  using 
sticks  and  stones,  of  building  shelters,  of  living  in 
families,  began — and  they  have  begun  among 
monkeys — it  is  likely  that  wits  would  grow  apace. 
The  prolonged  gestation  would  perhaps  help  the 
development  of  the  brain  and  the  prolonged  in- 
fancy, characteristic  of  human  offspring,  would 
help  the  growth  of  gentleness.  But  even  more 
important  is  the  fact  that  among  monkeys  there  are 
distinct  societies.  Families  combine  for  protec- 
tion, and  the  combination  favours  the  development 
of  emotional  and  intellectual  strength.  Nothing 
seems  more  certain,  especially  in  the  light  of  recent 
investigations,  than  that  our  mind  is  a  social  prod- 
uct. "Man  did  not  make  society;  society  made 
Man." 

It  behooves  us  to  be  extremely  careful  in  speak- 
ing of  the  factors  in  early  human  evolution.  We 
know  so  little.  "  In  the  case  of  mankind,"  Hux- 
ley wrote,  "the  self-assertion,  the  unscrupulous 
seizing  upon  all  that  can  be  grasped,  the  tenacious 
holding  of  all  that  can  be  kept,  which  constitute 
the  essence  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  have  an- 
swered. For  his  successful  progress,  as  far  as 
the  savage  state,  man  has  been  largely  indebted 
to  those  qualities  which  he  shares  with  the  ape  and 
the  tiger;  his  exceptional  physical  organization, 


196  The  Bible  of  Nature 

his  cunning,  his  sociability,  his  curiosity,  and  his 
imitativeness,  his  ruthless  and  ferocious  destruc- 
tiveness  when  his  anger  is  roused  by  opposition." 
There  is  doubtless  some  truth  in  this,  but  it  under- 
appreciates what  is  also  a  plain  fact  of  life  that  the 
success  of  the  Mammalian  type  depends  in  great 
part  on  maternal  care,  that  as  Henry  Drummond 
said,  the  " struggle  for  the  life  of  others"  is  as 
important  as  the  struggle  for  personal  subsistence. 
Repugnance  to  the  Scientific  Interpretation. — Many 
who  are  not  unwilling  to  admit  that  there  is  a 
certain  grandeur  in  the  doctrine  of  descent  as 
applied  to  plants  and  animals,  express  a  strong 
repugnance  to  the  whole  idea  of  the  Descent  of 
Man.  It  may  be  useful  to  inquire  into  this  re- 
pugnance, which  is  expressed  by  many  clear- 
headed and  noble-minded  men  and  women.  To 
some  extent,  it  is  due  to  misunderstanding.  Peo- 
ple run  off  with  the  mistaken  idea  that  evolution- 
ists try  to  prove  that  the  chimpanzee  is  their  second 
cousin  or  something  of  that  sort;  or  they  fancy 
that  Man,  according  to  biology,  is  no  more  than  a 
freak,  a  strangely  fortunate  ending  of  a  chapter  of 
accidents.  Or  the  reasons  for  the  repugnance  may 
have  an  aesthetic  basis,  since  some  people  dislike 
anything  in  the  nature  of  embryos,  preferring  to 
picture  their  ancestors  always  with  gray  hairs. 
They  will  not  look  on  the  rock  whence  they  were 
hewn  or  into  the  pit  whence  they  were  digged. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  197 

This  is  a  question  of  taste,  and  cannot  be  argued 
about.  To  most  naturalists  development  is  the 
most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world,  and  the  Hebrew 
psalmist  was  not  averse  to  reminding  himself  how 
his  members  were  fashioned  when  as  yet  there  was 
none  of  them.  More  serious,  however,  is  the  idea 
that  if  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man  be  true,  then  Man 
loses  dignity,  sanctity,  and  ethical  value.  In  the 
first  place,  perhaps,  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
scientific  interpretation  discloses  man  as  a  pre- 
determined masterpiece  of  nature,  as  a  creature 
whose  making  meant  ages  of  patience,  whose  birth 
came  about  after  long  travail.  Is  there  loss  of 
dignity  and  sanctity  in  this?  And  again,  the 
more  Man  is  seen  as  of  a  piece  with  nature,  as  her 
finest  flower,  the  more  meaning  does  nature  come 
to  have  for  him.  She  becomes  indeed  his  Alma 
Mater. 

A  simple  consideration,  which  is  always  use- 
ful, is  that  the  value  of  any  product  is  independent 
of  its  far-off  origin.  Our  appreciation  of  things 
is  usually  based  on  what  they  are,  and  on  what 
they  seem  likely  to  become;  it  is  not  affected  by 
their  remote  pedigree.  A  bird  is  not  less  a  bird 
because  the  avian  stock  arose  from  among  the 
reptiles.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  breeding 
counts,  but  that  is  quite  another  matter;  immediate 
ancestry  is  always  important  because  the  indi- 
vidual inheritance  is  a  living  mosaic  of  parental 


198  The  Bible  of  Nature 

and  ancestral  contributions.  But  when  a  great 
step  in  evolution  has  been  taken — such  as  the 
origin  of  Vertebrates,  or  of  any  of  the  great  classes 
of  Vertebrates — Amphibians,  Reptiles,  Birds,  or 
Mammals — our  estimate  of  the  advance  made  is 
not  affected  by  our  knowledge  of  the  origin.  To 
depreciate  man  because  he  had  non-human  an- 
cestors is  like  judging  a  statue  by  the  quarry.  Is 
it  a  poor  genealogy  that  the  naturalists  give  man  ? 
But  man  may  always  say  "  Je  suis  un  ancetre" 

Perhaps  the  deepest  repugnance  is  due  to  the 
misunderstanding  to  which  we  have  already  al- 
luded, that  according  to  science  Man  was  a  happy 
accident.  But  whatever  careless  writers  may  have 
said,  this  is  not  the  scientific  view.  Take  a  sen- 
tence rather  from  one  of  the  foremost  exponents — 
Professor  E.  Ray  Lankester:  "Man  is  held  to  be 
a  part  of  Nature,  a  product  of  the  definite  and 
orderly  evolution  which  is  universal;  a  being  re- 
sulting from  and  driven  by  the  one  great  nexus 
of  mechanism  which  we  call  Nature."  This  may 
not  be  the  whole  truth  about  Man,  but  here  at  any 
rate  there  is  no  suggestion  of  fortuity.  Again  he 
writes,  "  Man  forms  a  new  departure  in  the  grad- 
ual unfolding  of  Nature's  predestined  scheme." 
Mr.  Balfour  writes  in  the  "Foundations  of  Belief" 
(p.  75):  "An  irrational  universe  which  acciden- 
tally turns  out  a  few  reasoning  animals  at  one 
corner  of  it,  as  a  rich  man  may  experiment  at  one 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  199 

end  of  his  park  with  some  curious  " sport"  acci- 
dentally produced  among  his  flocks  and  herds,  is 
a  Universe  which  we  might  well  despise,  if  we  did 
not  ourselves  share  its  degradation."  This  is 
hard  hitting;  but  the  rational  Universe  which  ad- 
mits of  scientific  formulation,  does  not  turn  out 
its  masterpieces  accidentally. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  a  discussion  of 
Naturalism1  which  is  a  particular  scientific  phi- 
losophy with  a  name  that  one  cannot  but  grudge 
to  it.  But  when  Mr.  Balfour  says  that  Man,  ac- 
cording to  Naturalism,  is  "no  more  than  a  phe- 
nomenon among  phenomena,  a  natural  object 
among  other  natural  objects,  his  very  existence  an 
accident,  his  story  a  brief  and  transitory  episode 
in  the  life  of  one  of  the  meanest  of  the  planets," 
we  must  submit  that  there  is  more  in  such  a  state- 
ment than  science  warrants.  "  His  very  existence 
is  an  accident,"  is  not  a  scientific  statement;  we 
do  not  know  of  any  great  step  in  Nature  that  has 
been  taken  by  accident.  We  may  use  a  word  like 
"episode"  if  we  choose,  but  whatever  be  our 
view  of  man,  it  must  include  the  fact  that  he  has 
given  a  scientific  interpretation  of  nature  and  of 
his  place  in  it. 

Naturalism  finds  the  permanent  reality  of  the 
Universe  simply  in  the  world  as  revealed  to  us 

1  See  R.  Otto,  "Naturalism  and  Religion,"  Trans.,  Lon- 
don, 1907. 


200  The  Bible  of  Nature 

through  perception  or  through  the  spectacles  of 
Natural  Science.  But  the  whole  hierarchy  of  the 
sciences  speaks  of  another  reality  which  cannot  be 
sense-perceived,  and  even  with  scientific  spectacles 
we  cannot  but  be  aware  of  the  fundamental  mys- 
teriousness  of  Nature,  though  we  may  not 
therewith  be  able  to  discern  that  "higher  nature 
in  nature  which  makes  us  men."  Naturalism  de- 
nies any  real  causality  to  the  personal  agent  and 
makes  consciousness  no  more  than  inactive  control. 
But  it  is  difficult  to  doubt  the  genuine  conscious 
activity  of  the  subject.  It  seems  the  surest  of  all 
scientific  facts.  Ideas  have  hands  and  feet,  as 
Hegel  said,  and  move  the  world.  One  may  ask, 
indeed,  whether  the  existence  of  a  material  world 
per  se — a  system  of  unconscious  forces — a  self- 
acting  machine — is  a  thinkable  idea  at  all. 

Human  Conduct  and  Animal  Behaviour. — In  the 
ordinary  man's  daily  activity  we  can  readily  dis- 
tinguish various  grades.  There  is  usually  a  good 
deal  of  habitual  routine,  the  determination  of 
which  does  not  rise  to  the  focus  of  consciousness 
at  all.  Lower  than  this  is  some  instinctive  be- 
haviour, and  there  are  reflex  activities  often  of  con- 
siderable complexity.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
man  often  passes  beyond  habitual  routine  to  do 
something  which  is  positively  intelligent.  Now 
and  again  we  must  describe  his  activity  as  rational 
conduct.  It  almost  goes  without  saying  that  the 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  201 

greater  part  of  his  activity  is  non-ethical,  that  is 
to  say,  it  is  not  consciously  determined  in  reference 
to  general  ideas  or  ideals,  with  their  attendant  feel- 
ings as  impulses.  Some  highly  moralized  men 
and  women  are  able  to  give  an  ethical  note  to  a 
great  part  of  their  daily  activity,  but  this  is  not 
the  way  with  most,  though  at  almost  any  turn  a 
commonplace  act  may  acquire  ethical  value.  By 
ethical  conduct  we  do  not  necessarily  mean  good 
conduct,  but  conduct  deliberately  controlled  in 
relation  to  some  ideal — in  most  cases,  doubtless, 
one  that  makes  for  progressive  righteousness. 

When  a  man  is  hungry  he  usually  leaves  his 
work  or  his  play  and  goes  to  dine — obedient  to  an 
organic  signal  which  sounds  in  the  philosopher 
as  well  as  in  his  dog.  Instinctively  or  by  force  of 
habit,  he  neither  hurries  nor  eats  more  than  is 
customary  at  the  time.  Ethically,  he  may  refrain 
from  something  which  he  is  fond  of,  which  inter- 
feres with  his  effectiveness  as  a  workman. 

Moreover,  an  action  which  was  ethical  to  one 
generation  or  time  of  life  need  not  remain  so.  We 
live  in  the  hope  of  this.  It  was  an  ethical  act  on 
our  forefather's  part  not  to  overeat  himself,  and 
to  refrain  from  killing  his  enemy,  but  it  costs  none 
of  us  much  ethical  effort  to  avoid  gluttony  in  solids 
and  to  abstain  from  rapid  murder.  Thus,  in  a  sense, 
we  become  happier  and  better  as  we  become  less 
ethical — as  our  virtues  become  more  instinctive. 


202  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Among  animals  we  find  the  same  inclined  plane 
of  activities  as  in  man,  with  this  difference  that 
there  is  no  convincing  evidence  of  ethical  conduct. 
Instinctive  activities — which  depend  on  inborn 
capacities  and  require  neither  education  or  experi- 
ence for  their  performance,  though  they  may  be 
improved  thereby — often  bulk  largely;  intelligent 
behaviour,  up  to  the  limits  of  what  can  be  rede- 
scribed  in  terms  of  perceptual  inference — is  wide- 
spread, but  in  the  strict  sense  there  is  no  evidence 
of  reason  or  of  morals.  Animals  may  be  most 
loving  mates,  most  careful  parents,  faithful  to  their 
friends,  brave  to  the  death  for  their  near  kin,  but 
— poor  creatures — they  are  not  moral  agents. 
As  Nietzsche  said,  "their  virtue  is  free  from  any 
moralic  acid."  Animal  behaviour  differs  from 
human  conduct  for  lack  of  a  conceived  purpose. 
Not  that  animals  are  automata  or  wholly  instru- 
ments in  Nature's  hand,  but  their  purposefulness 
is  at  most  perceptual. 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  whole  range  of  activity, 
which  is  non-rational  and  non-ethical,  is  in  a  very 
real  sense  common  ground  for  man  and  beast,  al- 
ways allowing  that  in  man's  case  the  activity  may 
be  at  any  moment  rationalized  or  moralized.  A 
day  of  routine  work,  performed  without  definite 
pleasure  or  pain,  without  definite  effort  or  con- 
trol, but  just  "gone  through  with,"  is  often  lived 
by  man,  but  it  is  hardly  human,  not  to  speak 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  203 

of  ethical.  Yet  we  all  know  of  many  who  can 
transform  their  dreary  "day's  darg"  into  a  dis- 
cipline of  nobility — thus  raising  it  higher  than  its 
own  poor  merits  do  above  the  daily  activity  of  that 
exemplar  of  our  childhood — the  busy  bee.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  bees  are  perhaps  happier,  till  the 
winter  of  their  discontent  draws  near;  they  may  be 
troubled  with  parasites,  but  not  with  ideals.  As 
Walt  Whitman  said — so  truly — of  animals  in  gen- 
eral— "They  do  not  sweat  and  whine  about  their 
condition;  they  do  not  lie  awake  in  the  dark  and 
weep  for  their  sins;  they  do  not  make  me  sick 
discussing  their  duty — not  one  is  respectable  or 
unhappy  in  the  whole  world." 

As  we  study  animal  life  we  see  a  gradual  emer- 
gence of  the  fundamental  springs  of  conduct  which 
we  find — transmuted  of  course — in  ourselves. 
Starting  with  the  simple  protoplasts,  responsive 
to  oxygen,  warmth,  food,  and  one  another,  and 
also  exhibiting  in  some  cases  a  selective  behaviour 
which  we  cannot  redescribe  in  physical  and  chem- 
ical terms,  we  can  hypothetically  trace  the  evo- 
lution of  behaviour.  Very  important  steps  were 
the  formation  of  a  "body"  of  which  death  was 
the  price,  the  beginning  of  bilateral  symmetry,  the 
consequent  acquisition  of  head  brains,  the  differ- 
entiation of  the  sexes.  From  the  stages  now  per- 
sistent at  different  grades  of  the  animal  kingdom, 
we  infer  that  from  a  primary  hunger  there  arose 


204  The  Bible  of  Nature 

that  other  prime-mover — Love — which  almost 
alone  disputes  hunger's  claims  with  success.  The 
originally  simple  attraction  between  the  sexes 
becomes  gradually  associated  with  aesthetic  at- 
tractions, psychical  sympathies,  and  practical  co- 
operation in  work,  and  fondness  is  sublimed  into 
Love.  This  expands  till  it  laps  the  family  in  its 
folds,  returns  enhanced  to  the  pair,  and  broadens 
out  again  to  the  kindred.  Along  another  line  the 
primary  hunger  becomes  differentiated  into  desire 
to  avoid  pain,  to  increase  comfort  and  well-being, 
to  realize  the  self.  As  in  mankind,  the  egoistic 
and  altruistic,  the  self-preserving  and  other-re- 
garding impulses  intertwine,  so  that  at  the  end 
they  are  no  more  distinguishable  than  at  the  be- 
ginning. 

Has  Human  Conduct  Evolved  from  Animal  Be- 
haviour ? — A  study  of  animal  behaviour  seems  to  in- 
dicate that  while  we  may  not  be  justified  in  crediting 
animals  with  reason  or  with  morals  in  the  strict 
sense,  we  must  credit  them  with  what  may  be 
called  the  raw  materials  of  morality — with  af- 
fection, gentleness,  and  self-sacrifice,  with  jealousy, 
vanity,  self-assertiveness,  and  so  on  through  a  long 
list.  The  fundamental  motives  are  all  there. 

But  in  what  sense,  if  any,  may  it  be  said  that 
human  conduct  has  evolved  from  "animal  be- 
haviour" ?  It  appears  to  us  that  the  true  answer 
is,  that  man  inherited  from  his  pre-human  an- 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  205 

cestry  what  may  be  called  a  set  of  primary  im- 
pulses, which  he  immediately  proceeded  to  raise 
to  a  higher  power  by  virtue  of  his  peculiarly  in- 
creased cerebral  complexity.  What  we  mean 
may  be  illustrated  by  considering  the  case  of 
language. 

It  seems  certain  that  not  a  few  animals  have 
definite  words,  expressive  of  particular  emotional 
states  or  with  particular  significance  of  some  sort. 
Even  the  chick  has  some  half-dozen  words  and 
the  dog  perhaps  more,  both  excelling  in  vocabu- 
lary the  infant  who  has  no  language  but  a  cry. 
But  no  animal  is  known  to  have  the  power  of  ex- 
pressing a  judgment,  however  simple,  which  is  the 
essence  of  language.  It  may  be,  as  John  Oliver 
Hobbes  says,  that  "a  dog  can  put  more  soul  into  a 
look  than  a  kind  friend  can  talk  in  an  hour,"  but 
we  have  no  warrant  for  supposing  that  the  dog's 
sympathy,  even  when  expressed  in  a  welcoming 
bark,  has  any  general  idea  behind  it. 

Now,  while  we  cannot  doubt  that  Man  has  in- 
herited his  brains  and  the  centre  of  speech  and  his 
vocal  cords  from  simpler  non-human  ancestors, 
we  cannot  say  that  his  language  was  directly 
evolved  from  their  speech.  What  was  evolved 
was  the  Man,  with  a  more  complex  cerebral  struc- 
ture; and  language  is  a  human  product.  The  po- 
tentiality of  it,  the  raw  materials  of  it,  were  pre- 
human, but  so  far  as  we  know,  language  is  solely 


206  The  Bible  of  Nature 

human.  Even  if  we  knew  precisely  what  cerebral 
differentiations  and  integrations  are  conditionally 
associated  with  Man's  higher  powers,  even  if  we 
could  place  these  in  line  with  a  series  of  progressive 
changes  in  animals,  we  should  still  have  to  say — 
"The  Man  arose,  an  organism  at  length  rational; 
to  him  all  things  became  new — he  spoke,  and  he 
was  moral."  In  other  words,  while  we  need  not 
despair  of  finding  among  animals  the  analogues, 
the  rudiments,  the  Anlagen  of  language  and  con- 
science, we  need  not  hope  to  discover  the  phyletic 
history  of  these  powers  by  studying  animals.  In- 
creasing cerebral  complexity  made  a  higher  in- 
telligence possible,  and  both  language  and  con- 
science date  from  that  dawn. 

When  we  consider  how  it  stands  with  our  feel- 
ings and  those  of  animals,  we  find  a  certain  degree 
of  common  ground — such  as  fear  of  enemies,  dis- 
like of  pain,  sexual  passion,  jealousy  of  rival  mates, 
parental  affection  and  the  like.  On  a  second  plane 
are  those  feelings  which  though  shared  with  ani- 
mals are  peculiarly  modified  in  the  case  of  Man, 
through  association  with  ideas  rather  than  sense- 
experiences.  On  a  third  plane  are  those  feelings 
of  which  Man  seems  to  be  sole  possessor,  such  as 
modesty,  remorse,  reverence,  and  religious  emo- 
tion. The  "moral  feelings"  closely  associated 
with  our  ethical  judgments  and  entering  into  the 
composition  of  what  we  call  conscience,  such  as 


Man's  Place  in  Nature         .      207 

"shame  for  evil  done,"  remorse  for  injury  in- 
flicted, "pleasure  in  good  as  such,"  are  unique 
in  man,  with  only  dim  analogues  in  the  beast,  and 
hardly  recognizable  buds  in  the  young  child. 

The  two  opposed  errors  which  we  have  to  avoid 
are,  too  absolute  separation,  and  too  complete  ! 
identification.  In  regard  to  the  first  it  is  obvious 
that  we  cannot  prove  that  any  given  emotion  in  the 
dog  is  closely  akin  to  one  in  man;  there  is  no  se- 
cretion to  be  analyzed,  and  the  expressions  in 
gesture  and  physiognomy,  though  very  valuable 
indices  of  what  is  passing  within,  afford  insuffi- 
cient basis  for  identification.  Notwithstanding, 
our  faith  in  the  unity  of  nature  leads  us  to  suppose 
two  apparently  similar  emotions  in  man  and  beast 
to  be  in  general  nature  alike  except  where  there  is 
good  reason  to  believe  them  different,  e.  g.,  when 
the  human  form  of  the  feeling  in  question  has  ob- 
viously been  influenced  by  general  ideas.  It  is 
easy  to  see  some  difference  between  the  jealousy 
of  a  stag  and  the  jealousy  of  a  man;  but  it  is  equally 
easy  to  see  differences  between  the  jealousy  of  two 
men.  One  man's  jealousy  is  comforted  by  a  ;£50 
note,  another's  is  cruel  as  the  grave. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  to  avoid  the  error 
of  hasty  identification.  By  experience,  definitized 
in  some  sort  of  social  convention,  rooks  recognize 
the  eighth  commandment  in  the  rookery;  perhaps 
men  began  to  recognize  it  in  a  similar  way.  But 


208  The  Bible  of  Nature 

as  things  are,  rooks  obey  the  convention  by  a  ne- 
cessity of  a  somewhat  lower  order  than  that  which 
moves  the  virtuous  man,  who  is  moved  by  a 
thought  of  racial  and  social  consequences,  or  by 
a  conception  of  what  is  fit  for  conduct  universal. 
In  man's  case,  moreover,  the  matter  is  compli- 
cated theoretically — though  simplified  practically 
— by  the  high  development  of  what  might  be 
called  the  external  conscience,  embodied  in  social 
traditions,  institutions,  and  laws.  In  short,  just 
as  we  find  in  animals  perceptual  inferences  but  not 
conceptual  inferences,  so  we  find  no  feelings  born 
of  general  ideas.  Animals  may  be  kind,  gentle, 
devoted,  and  rich  in  good  feelings,  but  they  have 
no  moral  feelings  or  conscience. 

At  the  same  time,  one  cannot  doubt  that  ani- 
mals have  the  power  of  controlling  present  con- 
duct in  reference  to  an  end  more  or  less  distant. 
Apart  from  the  habitual  inhibitory  powers  of 
trained  animals,  there  are  many  such  cases;  thus 
it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  beavers,  who  cut  a 
canal  across  an  island  or  across  the  bend  of  a  river, 
have  not  a  perception  of  the  end  to  be  gained. 
The  labor  hardly  justifies  itself  until  the  work  is 
done.  But  at  the  most  this  is  a  concrete  ideal. 
It  would  be  an  error,  however,  to  exaggerate  this 
distinction  as  if  it  were  quite  absolute.  It  seems 
more  likely  that  intelligence  and  reason,  the  powers 
of  perception  and  conception,  will  merge,  for  just  as 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  209 

species  are  only  arcs  of  curves,  marked  off  for  our 
convenience,  so  is  it  with  many  other  distinctions 
equally  legitimate  and  useful. 

In  the  history  of  the  cosmos,  the  emergence  of 
the  first  living  animals  marked  a  new  era.  There 
was  a  new  synthesis  of  matter  and  energy,  the 
secret  of  which  is  hidden. 

In  the  history  of  animals  the  establishment  of  a 
centralized  nervous  system  and  the  associated 
beginning  of  a  unified  experience  marked  another 
new  era. 

Similarly,  the  origin  of  Man  implied  a  new 
series  of  differentiations  and  integrations  of  which 
we  get  some  hint  from  a  study  of  the  child.  With 
Man  all  things  became  new. 

Thus  it  seems  that  to  look  for  morals  in  the  beast 
is  like  looking  for  a  backbone  in  a  worm.  What 
we  may  look  for  is  an  Anlage,  a  primordium,  a 
rudiment  of  that  tissue,  so  to  speak,  from  which 
reason,  conscience,  and  language,  and  other  dis- 
tinctively human  qualities  had  their  origin.  But 
the  real  crossing  of  the  Rubicon  was  due  to  cere- 
bral mutation.  In  so  saying,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  no  scientific  formula-word  lessens  the 
magnitude  of  the  step  which  was  taken.  We  agree 
with  the  philosopher  who  says  that  "the  breach 
between  ethical  man  and  pre-human  nature  con- 
stitutes, without  exception,  the  most  important 
fact  which  the  universe  has  to  show." 


210  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Huxley's  Thesis  as  Regards  Human  and  Cosmic 
Evolution. — We  must  now  return  to  the  argument 
expounded  by  Huxley  in  his  "Romanes  Lecture 
on  Evolution  and  Ethics."  The  argument  was 
that  the  mechanism  of  organic  evolution  is  natural 
selection  in  an  inexorable  struggle  for  existence, 
in  which  there  is  nothing  but  ruthless  self-asser- 
tion, a  treading  down  of  rivals,  a  gladiatorial  show, 
more  or  less  enduring  suffering,  and  the  result  of 
which  is  merely  the  survival  of  the  most  suitable, 
not  of  the  best  in  any  sense.  If  this  be  so,  then 
"the  practice  of  that  which  is  ethically  best — what 
we  call  goodness  or  virtue — involves  a  course  of 
conduct  which,  in  all  respects,  is  opposed  to  that 
which  leads  to  success  in  the  cosmic  struggle  for 
existence."  "Social  progress  means  the  checking 
of  the  cosmic  process  at  every  step,  and  the  substi- 
tution for  it  of  the  ethical  process,  the  end  of  which 
is  not  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  but  the  survival 
of  those  ethically  the  best."  Man  must  pit  his 
microcosm  against  the  macrocosm,  and  he  must 
not  be  discouraged.  "  Man  alone,"  as  Goethe  said, 
"can  achieve  the  impossible."  The  dwarf  by  his 
intelligence  can  bend  the  Titan  to  his  will  in  mat- 
ters practical,  so  may  it  be  in  the  domain  of  morals. 
"The  intelligence  which  has  converted  the  brother 
of  the  wolf  into  the  faithful  guardian  of  the  flock 
ought  to  be  able  to  do  something  toward  curbing 
the  instincts  of  savagery  in  civilized  men."  But, 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  211 

"let  us  understand,  once  for  all,  that  the  ethical 
progress  of  society  depends,  not  on  imitating  the 
cosmic  process,  still  less  in  running  away  from  it, 
but  in  combating  it."  "  The  practice  of  that  which 
is  ethically  best — what  we  call  goodness  or  virtue — 
involves  a  course  of  conduct,  which,  in  all  respects, 
is  opposed  to  that  which  leads  to  success  in  the 
cosmic  struggle  for  existence."  Nature  has  many 
voices,  but  Huxley  could  hear  no  helpful  word  for 
man  in  his  endeavor  after  better-being.  Similarly, 
so  far  as  we  understand,  Professor  James,  of  Har- 
vard, in  his  lecture,  "Is  Life  Worth  Living?"  also 
gives  Nature  up,  finding  no  "universe,"  but  a 
"multiverse";  "all  plasticity  and  indifference,"  a 
"harlot"  and  "mere  weather." 

In  Huxley's  thesis  we  recognize  several  truths, 
but  not  the  whole  truth.  It  is  useful  inasmuch  as 
it  emphasizes  the  difference  between  man  and  pre- 
human nature,  between  the  %u>ov  \oyiicbv  TTO\I,TUCOV 
(f)L\d\Xrj\ov  (the  rational,  social,  and  altruistic 
organism  of  the  Stoics)  and  the  rest  of  creation. 
It  is  useful,  since  it  hints  at  the  fact  that  we  can- 
not find  any  ethical  conduct  in  the  strict  sense  in 
even  the  most  loving  of  animals,  though  it  perhaps 
exaggerates  this  difference.  It  is  useful  inasmuch 
as  it  presses  home  the  truth  that  man  as  a  personal 
agent  has  emerged  from  the  drastic  rule  of  Nat- 
ural Selection;  he  is  Nature's  rebellious  child  and 
must  continue  to  rebel  if  he  is  to  continue  to  hold 


212  The  Bible  of  Nature 

his  own,  still  more  if  he  is  to  make  progress.  It 
is  useful  inasmuch  as  it  emphasizes  the  fact  that 
ethical  progress  must  always  be  a  struggle,  an  en- 
deavor, a  fight  as  St.  Paul  said.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  would  dissent  from  Huxley's  reasoning 
on  the  following  grounds: 

(1)  Huxley  does  not  appear  to  us  to  have  given  a 
just  picture  of  the  cosmic  process.  He  used  far  too 
much  red.  Is  it  not  the  case  that,  while  the  logic 
of  organic  evolution  always  remains  the  same, 
the  significance  of  the  process  changes  when  we 
observe  that  the  milk  of  animal  kindness  is  se- 
lected as  well  as  teeth  and  claws,  that  maternal 
care  is  selected  as  well  as  paternal  belligerence, 
that  the  world  is  not  merely  the  battlefield  of  the 
strong,  but  the  home  of  the  loving  ?  According  to 
Huxley,  life  has  been  and  is  a  continual  free  fight, 
and  beyond  the  limited  and  temporary  relations 
of  the  family,  the  Hobbesian  war  of  each  against 
all  has  been  and  is  the  normal  state  of  existence. 
But,  as  Kropotkin  observes,  this  has  as  little  claim 
to  be  taken  as  a  scientific  deduction  as  the  opposite 
view  of  Rousseau,  who  saw  in  nature  nothing  but 
love,  peace,  and  harmony  (disturbed  by  the  ac- 
cession of  man). 

Almost  every  critic  has  pointed  out  that  Huxley 
could  not  himself  adhere  to  his  gladiatorial  show 
picture.  Somewhat  contradictorily  and  some- 
what grudgingly  he  added  in  the  appendix  a  note 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  213 

to  the  following  effect:  "Of  course,  strictly  speak- 
ing, social  life  and  the  ethical  process  in  virtue  of 
which  it  advances  toward  perfection,  are  part  and 
parcel  of  the  general  process  of  Evolution,  just  as 
the  gregarious  habit  of  innumerable  plants  and 
animals,  which  has  been  of  much  service  to  them, 
is."  "Among  birds  and  mammals,  societies  are 
formed,  of  which  the  bond  in  many  cases  seems  to 
be  purely  psychological;  that  is  to  say,  it  appears  to 
depend  upon  the  liking  of  the  individuals  for  one 
another's  company.  The  tendency  of  individuals 
to  over-self-assertion  is  kept  down  by  righting. 
Even  in  these  rudimentary  forms  of  society,  love 
and  fear  come  into  play,  and  enforce  a  greater  or 
less  renunciation  of  self-will.  To  this  extent  the 
general  cosmic  process  begins  to  be  checked  by  a 
rudimentary  ethical  process,  which  is,  strictly 
speaking,  part  of  the  former,  just  as  the  "gov- 
ernor" in  a  steam  engine  is  part  of  the  mechanism 
of  the  engine." 

It  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  sentence,  "The 
tendency  of  individuals  to  over-self-assertion  is 
kept  down  by  fighting,"  is,  for  many  cases,  a  quite 
unverifiable  statement,  but  let  that  pass.  It  is 
more  to  the  point  to  notice  that  to  admit  a  rudi- 
mentary ethical  process  to  a  r°le  like  that  of  the 
"governor"  is  admitting  much;  in  fact,  it  rather 
takes  the  edge  off  his  previous  argument.  But 
in  spite  of  his  appendix,  Huxley  leaves  the  reader 


214  The  Bible  of  Nature 

with  the  impression  that  the  self-assertion  of  the 
strong  at  the  expense  of  the  weak  is  the  universal 
law  of  nature. 

(2)  Moreover,  while  it  is  quite  true  that  the  cos- 
mic process  leads  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest  for 
given  conditions,  not  necessarily  to  the  survival 
of  the  noblest  or  the  most  beautiful  or,  in  any  way 
but  one,  the  best;  that  the  parasite  is  the  result  of 
selection  just  as  much  as  the  paragon  of  creation ; 
that  if  the  northern  hemisphere  became  glacial 
again,  the  fittest  creatures  would  be  lichens  and 
snow  plants;  does  not  Huxley's  argument  tend  to 
obscure  the  fact  that,  after  all,  there  has  been  a 
progressive  evolution  of  finer  and  freer  types  in 
the  course  of  the  ages  ?    The  cosmic  process  may 
have  "no  sort  of  relation  to  moral  ends,"  but  it  has 
led  up  to  most  marvellous  masterpieces,  along  any 
line  you  choose  to  follow,  and  notably  along  that 
line  which  leads  to  man.     Has  it  "  no  sort  of  rela- 
tion to  moral  ends,"1  when  it  has  led  up  along 
many  lines  to  extraordinary  exhibitions  of  parental 
sacrifice   and   altruistic  devotion?    Has   it   "no 
sort  of  relation  to  moral  ends,"  if  it  puts  a  premium 
on  health,  vigor,  self-control,  temperance? 

(3)  Speaking  of  the  more  or  less  sound  argu- 

1  It  seems  rather  strange  that  Huxley  in  disclaiming  any 
ethical  note  in  organic  evolution  should  have  persistently 
used  phrases  like  "ruthless  self-assertion,"  or  "the  un- 
fathomable injustice  of  the  nature  of  things." 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  215 

ments  in  favor  of  the  theory  that  the  moral  senti- 
ments have  arisen  in  the  same  way  as  other  natural 
phenomena,  by  a  process  of  evolution,  Huxley  said, 
"but  as  immoral  sentiments  have  no  less  been 
evolved,  there  is,  so  far,  as  much  natural  sanction 
for  the  one  as  the  other.  The  thief  and  the 
murderer  follow  nature  just  as  much  as  the  philan- 
thropist." "  Cosmic  evolution  may  teach  us  how 
the  good  and  evil  tendencies  of  man  may  have 
come  about;  but,  in  itself,  it  is  incompetent  to 
furnish  any  better  reason,1  why  what  we  call  good 
is  preferable  to  what  we  call  evil,  than  we  had  be- 
fore." 

Is  this  really  so  ?    On  the  contrary,  it  seems  that 

1  It  is  difficult  to  understand  what  Huxley  meant  by 
''better  reason."  We  must  first  ask  whether  the  study  of 
cosmic  evolution  furnishes  any  reason  why  well-doing  is 
preferable  to  ill-doing.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  it 
will  furnish  any  more  convincing  reason  than  the  study  of 
human  history  furnishes.  Without  raising  any  deep 
questions  we  may  surely  agree  that  good  conduct  in  man 
is  that  which,  on  the  whole,  makes  for  evolution — for 
progress  along  the  line  indicated  by  the  ascent  of  man, 
that  it  makes  for  health,  clear  minds,  fulness  and  freedom 
of  life,  a  happier  and  more  harmonious  society,  and  so  on. 
It  is  thus  in  a  line  with  that  kind  of  doing  which  among 
animals  has  persisted,  and  is  the  opposite  of  that  kind  of 
doing  which,  as  it  crops  up  in  Protean  guise,  is  subjected 
to  elimination,  or,  in  the  case  of  parasites,  to  degradation, 
to  a  loss,  for  instance,  of  the-  nervous  and  muscular  activi- 
ties which  make  life  most  worth  living.  As  already  ex- 
plained, it  seems  to  us  futile  to  look  among  animals  for 
any  ethical  conduct  in  the  strict  sense. 


216  The  Bible  of  Nature 

the  naturalists  are  right  who  point  out  that  what  we 
may  call  "crime"  does  not  flourish  in  Nature,  ex- 
cept in  a  few  rare  cases  such  as  that  of  the  cuckoo ; 
that  it  is  the  law  of  the  forest  that  certain  conven- 
tions of  mutual  regard  be  observed  (during  hunting 
at  least  even  the  wolves  of  the  pack  must  forget 
their  private  quarrels);  and  that  the  reward  of 
great  success  attends  those  creatures  that  excel 
in  sociality,  such  as  the  ants  and  the  bees,  the 
rooks  and  the  cranes,  the  beavers  and  the  monkeys. 
That  man  has  almost  exterminated  the  beaver 
does  not  affect  this  argument. 

Besides,  we  should  remember  that  what  corre- 
sponds to  virtue  in  Man  is  in  great  measure  neces- 
sarily represented  simply  by  vigor  among  animals, 
and  that  here  Nature's  verdict  is  clear.  Disease 
is  very  rare  unless  man  interferes.  To  say  that 
well-doing  has  only  as  much  natural  sanction  as 
ill-doing  seems  like  saying  that  disease  has  as 
much  natural  sanction  as  health.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  has  so  little  that  in  extra-human  condi- 
tions1 diseased  organisms  are  in  most  cases 
rapidly  eliminated.  Nature's  verdict  is  quite 
clear. 

(4)  In  general  terms,  Nature's  method  of  or- 

1  Professor  Ray  Lankester  points  out  that  almost  the 
only  case  of  a  persistent  microbic  disease  among  animals 
in  a  state  of  nature  is  that  of  the  phosphorescent  sand- 
hoppers  on  the  French  coast;  and  perhaps  even  this  is  due 
to  some  human  interference  with  their  environment. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  217 

ganic  evolution  is  the  elimination  of  unfit  varia- 
tions, the  selection  of  fit  variations,  and  this  as  a 
formula  remains  for  us — perhaps  the  greatest 
lesson  that  Nature  teaches.  As  we  have  seen, 
the  modes  of  selection  differ  widely,  though  the 
logic  of  the  process  is  always  the  same.  We  sub- 
mit, therefore,  that  in  social  progress  we  have  not 
to  combat  Nature's  method,  but  to  follow  it,  and 
that  we  do  so  every  time  that  we  favor  the  vir- 
tuous and  thwart  the  vicious,  every  time  that  we 
reject  an  ugly  product  and  choose  a  beautiful  one, 
every  time  that  we  vote  against  militarism  and 
make  for  peace.  It  is  our  prerogative  to  select 
those  forms  of  struggle  which  seem  most  likely  to 
favor  the  survival  of  our  human  ideals. 

(5)  Finally,  another  consideration  may  be  sug- 
gested. Is  it  not  generally  admitted  that  the  moral 
ideal  is  one  of  self-realization  through  social 
service,  a  self-realization  which  implies  a  willing- 
ness to  be  immersed  and  even  lost  in  the  good 
of  the  whole?  And  is  this  not  also  the  deeper 
aspect  of  Nature's  strategy,  that  the  individual 
organism  realizes  itself  in  its  interrelations,  and 
has  to  submit  to  being  lost  that  the  larger  welfare 
of  the  whole  may  be  served?  To  sum  up,  our 
general  conclusion  may  be  stated  thus:  "We  see 
that  it  is  possible  to  interpret  the  ideals  of  ethical 
progress — through  love  and  sociality,  cooperation 
and  sacrifice — not  as  mere  Utopias  contradicted 


218  The  Bible  of  Nature 

by  experience,  but  as  the  highest  expressions  of 
the  central  evolutionary  process  of  the  natural 
world.  As  evolutionary  biologists  we  are  thus 
practically  with  moralist  and  theologian,  even  with 
poet  and  sentimentalist,  if  you  will,  against  the 
' vulgar  economist*  of  Ruskin,  or  the  self-styled 
'practical  politician*  of  to-day."1 

Retrospect. — So  far,  we  have  considered  man  as 
an  organism,  the  long  result  of  time,  the  pre- 
destined outcome  of  a  long-drawn-out  orderly 
process,  the  heir  of  all  the  ages.  We  see  him 
emerging,  to  use  Walt  Whitman's  quaint  phrase, 
"stuccoed  all  over  with  quadrupeds." 

We  then  saw,  however,  that  man,  because  he 
is  man,  has  freed  himself  from  passive  subordina- 
tion to  the  cosmic  mechanism — in  a  much  greater 
degree  than  any  other  creature.  He  will  not  be 
tied  to  his  mother's  apron  strings,  though  he  often 
returns  to  her  wearied.  He  will  make  a  kingdom 
for  himself — an  imperium  in  imperio;  he  pits  him- 
self against  the  cosmic  processes. 

We  have  thus  simply  hinted  at  another  chapter 
— how  man  actively  uses  Nature  for  his  own  ad- 
vancement, for  fuller  self-realization,  for  the  de- 
velopment of  his  spirit.  The  servant  becomes  a 
master,  the  searcher  an  interpreter,  and  the  prod- 
uct of  evolution  furnishes  a  key  to  the  whole. 

•Thomson  and  Geddes,  in  "Ideals  of  Science  and 
Faith/'  London,  1905,  p.  73. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  219 

Value  of  the  Evolutionary  Conception  of  Man. — In 
accordance  with  the  philosophical  temper  of  the 
time,  we  must  now  ask  what  the  evolutionary  in- 
terpretation of  man  is  good  for.  What  is  the  value 
of  the  view  that  science  takes  of  man's  place  in 
Nature?  Nietzsche  said  that  history  has  three 
great  uses — a  monumental  use,  perpetuating  the 
memory  of  great  deeds  and  great  men;  an  anti- 
quarian use,  showing  the  living  hand  of  the  past  in 
the  present;  and  a  critical  use,  enabling  us  to 
estimate  the  present  provisional  order  of  things  by 
comparing  it  with  what  has  been  before.  So  the 
evolution-doctrine  has  a  monumental  use,  re- 
minding us  of  great  events  in  the  past;  an  anti- 
quarian use,  showing  the  solidarity  of  what  is  and 
what  has  been;  and  a  critical  use,  enabling  us  to 
judge  of  the  present  trend  of  things  in  the  light  of 
past  history. 

In  the  first  place,  is  it  not  of  great  significance 
that,  while  science  does  not  pretend  to  deal  at  all 
with  ultimate  realities  or  with  the  purpose  of  evo- 
lution, it  can  give  a  provisional  intelligible  history 
of  things  and  living  creatures  and  man  himself — 
intelligible  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a  genetic  descrip- 
tion of  what  has  occurred.  This,  it  seems  to  us,  is 
the  greatest  contribution  which  science  makes  to 
human  thought.  As  Professor  Pringle-Pattison 
says:  "The  postulate  which  underlies  every  sci- 
entific induction  is  the  intelligibility  of  the  uni- 


220  The  Bible  of  Nature 

verse — the  belief,  in  other  words,  that  we  are  living 
in  a  cosmos,  not  a  chaos,  the  belief  that  the  Power 
at  work  in  the  Universe  will  not  put  us  to  per- 
manent intellectual  confusion.  This  is  an  ultimate 
trust,  which  is  not  capable  of  demonstration, 
though  progressively  verified  and  justified  by  every 
step  we  take  in  the  intellectual  conquest  of  the  world." 

Again,  looking  at  the  Evolution-idea  quite  gen- 
erally as  the  largest  contribution  which  Natural 
Science  has  made  to  human  thought,  may  we  not 
augue  to  some  purpose  in  this  fashion  ?  Science 
looks  backward  to  a  beginning,  and  says  there  is 
nothing  in  the  end  which  is  not  also  in  the  begin- 
ning. Philosophy  looks  forward  to  an  end  which 
illustrates  the  significance  of  the  whole.  Science 
uses  the  amoeba  in  its  interpretation  of  man, 
philosophy  uses  man  in  its  interpretation  of  the 
amoeba.  There  are  doubtless  difficulties  in  both 
interpretations;  we  have  seen  that  the  scientific  one 
is  far  from  easy.  But  they  are  not  opposed  to 
one  another  and  they  seem  equally  natural  to  all 
of  us,  though  we  may  not  be  expert  in  following 
up  either  of  them.  We  cannot  mix  them  up  to- 
gether, but  neither  can  we  hold  them  in  insulation 
in  our  thinking.  They  are  complementary  out- 
looks on  the  world. 

The  embryologist  describes  the  development  of 
an  individual  bird,  he  uses  the  fertilized  egg-cell 
as  his  starting-point,  he  believes  that  this  in  some 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  221 

way  contains  the  potentiality  of  all  that  is  to  follow 
— intelligent  behavior  included,  always  admitting, 
of  course,  that  the  organism,  as  it  develops,  trades 
with  its  legacy  of  talents,  using  time  to  gather  into 
itself  the  influences  of  environmental  nurture.  In 
his  science  the  biologist  tries  to  take  the  developing 
egg  just  for  what  it  seems  to  him  to  be — a  growing 
mass  of  protoplasmic  units — self-differentiating, 
self-regulating,  autonomous.  He  does  not  use 
the  intelligence  of  the  adult  as  a  factor  in  em- 
bryonic development,  for  he  can  describe  the  se- 
quences without  using  psychological  terms,  and 
he  must  keep  to  that  method.  Yet,  for  the  life  of 
him,  he  cannot  forget  that  the  egg  becomes  an  in- 
telligent creature,  and  in  his  whole  thought  of  the 
egg  he  must  see  it  in  relation  to  its  end. 

Similarly,  the  evolutionist  describes  the  history 
of  the  race  of  birds,  using  a  reptilian  stock,  and  long 
before  that  a  Protist  stock  as  his  starting-point. 
He  believes  that  his  beginning  in  some  way  in- 
cludes the  potentiality  of  all  that  follows,  but  in 
his  method  he  tries  to  take  each  stage  just  for  what 
it  seems  to  him  to  be.  He  cannot  credit  the 
Protists  with  a  central  nervous  system,  though  he 
believes  that  they  have  the  remote  potentiality  of 
it.  Yet,  for  the  life  of  him,  he  cannot  forget  that 
the  original  Protists  must  have  had  in  them  the 
promise  and  potency  of  all  that  follows,  always  re- 
membering that  each  stage  gathers  the  results  of 


222  The  Bible  of  Nature 

time  into  itself.  In  his  whole  thought  of  the  evo- 
lution, he  must  see  it  in  relation  to  the  end.  In 
short,  in  philosophical  language,  "If  the  lower 
carries  in  it  the  promise  and  potency  of  the  higher, 
then  how  can  we  substantiate  the  lower  as  out  of 
relation  to  the  higher  in  which  we  read  the  mean- 
ing of  the  whole  development  ? "  (A.  S.  Pringle- 
Pattison.) 

Inheritance. — Let  us  think  for  a  moment  of  the 
fundamental  fact  of  inheritance.1  As  Huxley  says  ^ 

"Every  one  of  us  bears  upon  him  obvious  marks  of  his 
parentage,  perhaps  of  remoter  relationships.  More  par- 
ticularly, the  sum  of  tendencies  to  act  in  a  certain  way, 
which  we  call  'character,'  is  often  to  be  traced  through  a 
long  series  of  progenitors  and  collaterals.  So  we  may 
justly  say  that  this  'character'— this  moral  and  intellectual 
essence  of  a  man— does  veritably  pass  over  from  one 
fleshly  tabernacle  to  another  and  does  really  transmigrate 
from  generation  to  generation.  In  the  new-born  infant, 
the  character  of  the  stock  lies  latent  and  the  Ego  is  little 
more  than  a  bundle  of  potentialities.  But,  very  early, 
these  become  actualities;  from  childhood  to  age  they 
manifest  themselves  in  dullness  or  brightness,  weakness 
or  strength,  viciousness  or  uprightness;  and  with  each 
feature  modified  by  confluence  with  another  character,  if 
by  nothing  else,  the  character  passes  on  to  its  incarnation 
in  new  bodies." 

Now  let  us  extend  this  conception  a  little.    From 

1  See  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  "  Heredity,"  Murray,  London, 
1908. 
>  "Evolution  and  Ethics,"  p.  14. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  223 

the  scientific  outlook  man  is  seen  as  the  child  of 
nature.  He  is  the  "last  inheritor  and  the  last  re- 
sult" of  a  pedigree  which  goes  back  for  millions 
of  years,  the  last  manifestation  of  a  Karma  which 
has  been  gradually  modified  since  the  time  when 
life  appeared  upon  the  earth.  More  immediately 
the  paragon  of  animals  is  a  scion  of  a  Simian  stock. 
Thus,  perhaps,  we  can  better  understand  the  beast 
in  the  man.  Much  of  the  inherent  sinfulness  which 
vexes  the  righteous  soul,  is  the  outcrop — the  re- 
crudescence— of  ancestral  habits.  We  need  no 
elaborate  theory  of  it.  We  have  to  let  the  ape  and 
tiger  die,  and  they  often  die  hard.  We  rise  on 
stepping-stones  of  our  dead  selves  to  higher  things, 
but  the  grave  clothes  hang  about  us,  as  about 
Lazarus,  hampering  our  steps. 
Huxley  goes  on  to  say: 

"After  the  manner  of  successful  persons,  civilized  man 
would  gladly  kick  down  the  ladder  by  which  he  has 
climbed.  He  would  be  only  too  pleased  to  see  'the  ape 
and  tiger  die.'  But  they  decline  to  suit  his  convenience; 
and  the  unwelcome  intrusion  of  these  boon  companions 
of  his  hot  youth  into  the  ranged  existence  of  civilized  life 
adds  pains  and  griefs,  innumerable  and  immeasurably 
great,  to  those  which  the  cosmic  process  necessarily  brings 
on  the  mere  animal.  In  fact,  civilized  man  brands  all 
these  ape  and  tiger  promptings  with  the  name  of  sins; 
he  punishes  many  of  the  acts  which  flow  from  them  as 
crimes;  and,  in  extreme  cases,  he  does  his  best  to  put  an 
end  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest  of  former  days  by  axe  and 
rope." 


224  The  Bible  of  Nature 

"Return  to  Nature." — Another  corollary  drives 
home  a  consideration  which  often  seems  so  im- 
practicable that  we  wriggle  away  from  it.  It  is  the 
value  of  "a  return  to  nature"  in  one  sense  of  that 
much-abused  phrase.  Biologists  are  familiar  with 
the  fact  that,  if  an  inheritance  is  to  find  appropri- 
ate expression,  the  organism  must  develop  in  an 
appropriate  environment.  Otherwise,  potentiali- 
ties will  not  be  realized,  the  legacy  cannot  be 
cashed.  Now,  if  our  natural  inheritance  has  been 
determined  in  the  distant  past  under  conditions 
that  imply  close  contact  with  nature — emotional 
as  well  as  practical — it  seems  common  sense  that 
we  and  our  children  will  always  be  handicapped 
unless  we  can  renew  the  contact.  This  is  part  of 
the  true  inwardness  of  the  "  Nature-study  "  move- 
ment, the  rus  in  urbe,  and  the  garden-city.  This 
is,  in  part,  the  gospel  according  to  Wordsworth, 
and  according  to  Thoreau. 

There  is,  however,  another  side  to  this.  There 
were  conditions  of  life  in  ancient  days  which  man- 
kind can  never  seriously  wish  to  know  again.  A 
struggle  around  the  platter  of  bare  subsistence,  as 
of  pigs  around  the  feeding-trough,  should  be  an 
impossible  phenomenon  among  men.  Yet,  through 
our  selfishness  and  folly,  we  often  sink  back  into 
vital  conditions  which  are  horrible  anachronisms, 
which  are  inhuman  and  brutal,  and  then  we 
wonder  at  a  recrudescence  of  hooliganism,  licen- 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  225 

tiousness,  and  savagery.  There  is  no  cause  for 
wonder.  By  restoring  the  undesirable  stimuli  we 
have  reawakened  the  beast  in  the  man,  the  ape 
once  more  gibbers  folly  and  the  tiger  whets  his 
teeth.  We  have  given  new  life  to  the  latent 
germs  of  brutality,  which,  otherwise,  would  gradu- 
ally die  away. 

The  Yoke  of  Natural  Selection. — A  third  corollary 
is  not  less  important.  There  is  one  sense,  at  least, 
in  which  we  can  never  "return  to  nature,"  unless 
we  cease  to  be  human.  We  can  never  resume  the 
yoke  of  natural  selection  which  even  early  man 
began  to  wriggle  out  of,  which  man  has  been  more 
and  more  effectively  throwing  off  as  the  ages  have 
passed.  Professor  Ray  Lankester  has  put  this 
point  with  splendid  clearness.: 

"The  mental  qualities  which  have  developed  in  Man, 
though  traceable  in  a  vague  and  rudimentary  condition 
in  some  of  his  animal  associates,  are  of  such  an  unprece- 
dented power  and  so  far  dominate  everything  else  in  his 
activities  as  a  living  organism,  that  they  have  to  a  very 
large  extent,  if  not  entirely,  cut  him  off  from  the  general 
operation  of  that  process  of  Natural  Selection  and  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  which  up  to  their  appearance  has  been 
the  law  of  the  living  world.  They  justify  the  view  that 
man  forms  a  new  departure  in  the  gradual  unfolding  of 
Nature's  predestined  scheme.  Knowledge,  reason,  self- 
consciousness,  will,  are  the  attributes  of  Man. 

"Nature's  inexorable  discipline  of  death  to  those  who 
do  not  rise  to  her  standard — survival  and  parentage  for 
those  alone  who  do — has  been  from  the  earliest  times  more 


226  The  Bible  of  Nature 

and  more  definitely  resisted  by  the  will  of  Man.  If  we 
may,  for  the  purpose  of  analysis,  as  it  were,  extract  man 
from  the  rest  of  Nature  of  which  he  is  truly  a  product  and 
part,  then  we  may  say  that  Man  is  Nature's  rebel.  Where 
Nature  says  'Die I'  Man  says  'I  will  live.' 

"Civilized  man  has  proceeded  so  far  in  his  interference 
with  extra-human  nature,  has  produced  for  himself  and 
the  living  organisms  associated  with  him  such  a  special 
state  of  things  by  his  rebellion  against  natural  selection, 
and  his  defiance  of  Nature's  pre-human  dispositions,  that 
he  must  either  go  on  and  acquire  firmer  control  of  the 
conditions,  or  perish  miserably  by  the  vengeance  certain 
to  fall  on  the  half-hearted  meddler  in  great  affairs.  We 
may  indeed  compare  civilized  man  to  a  successful  rebel 
against  Nature,  who  by  every  step  forward  renders  him- 
self liable  to  greater  and  greater  penalties,  and  so  cannot 
afford  to  pause  or  fail  in  one  single  step.  .  .  .  Man, 
whilst  emancipating  himself  from  the  destructive  methods 
of  natural  selection,  has  accumulated  a  new  series  of 
dangers  and  difficulties  with  which  he  must  incessantly 
contend." 

The  Hopefulness  of  the  Evolutionist  Outlook. — In 
general,  it  seems  to  us  that  the  evolutionary  view 
is  one  that  inspires  and  encourages.  It  is  an  as- 
cent, not  a  descent,  that  is  behind  us,  and  there  are 
no  limits  to  set  to  our  advance.  Perhaps,  indeed, 
we  shall  advance  more  quickly  as  we  become  more 
vividly  conscious  that  our  fates  are  in  our  own 
hands.  We  are  no  longer  as  those  who  look  back 
to  a  Paradise  in  which  man  fell;  we  are  rather  as 
those  "  who  rowing  hard  against  the  stream,  see 
distant  gates  of  Eden  gleam  and  do  not  dream  it  is 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  227 

a  dream."  We  have  spoken  of  our  heritage  from 
pre-human  ancestry  whose  recrudescence  in  evil 
passions  sometimes  amazes  and  perplexes  even 
the  godly;  but  we  must  remember  the  other  side, 
that  we  have  a  heritage  of  good  impulses  which 
are  much  older  than  our  race;  the  springs  of  good 
conduct — of  kin-sympathy,  of  family  affection,  of 
gentleness — which  have  been  welling  forth  almost 
since  life  began. 

Riddles  of  the  Universe. — We  cannot  look  back 
on  the  story  we  have  outlined  without  a  sense  of 
the  riddles  of  the  universe. 

Even  when  we  keep  to  things  as  they  are,  we  find 
ourselves  surrounded  by  unsolved  problems.  We 
see  the  swallows  flying  south  across  the  river;  how 
much  patient  inquiry  has  there  been  over  this  prob- 
lem of  migration;  how  far  are  we  from  a  clear 
understanding  of  it!  This  may  serve  as  an  in- 
stance of  the  kind  of  problem  that  fascinates  the 
naturalist,  which  he  hopes  some  day  to  solve. 

We  move  our  arm  to  turn  a  page,  and  we  pause 
to  reflect  upon  all  that  this  involves.  With  some 
pains  we  could  perhaps  give  a  long  account  of  the 
motor  impulses,  muscular  movements,  chemical 
explosions,  and  what  not  that  have  occurred;  but 
how  far  are  we  from  having  a  clear  view  of  the 
whole  chain  of  events.  We  know  much,  for  in- 
stance, in  regard  to  the  electrical  change  associated 
with  the  muscular  contraction,  but  how  little  we 


228  The  Bible  of  Nature 

understand  as  to  its  precise  significance.  How 
far  we  are  from  understanding  what  turning  the 
page  really  means. 

It  is  part  of  the  scientific  business  to  describe 
happenings  in  the  simplest  terms,  to  connect  par- 
ticular results  with  particular  conditions,  to  make 
formulse  which  sum  up  often  repeated  chains  of 
sequence — how  much  of  this  there  is  still  to  do  in 
every  department  of  inquiry.  Many  of  the  unsolved 
problems  of  things  as  they  are  will  doubtless  be 
cleared  up  if  science  goes  on  developing,  and  will 
be  then  replaced  by  other  unsolved  problems.  So 
it  will  go  on — perhaps  asymptotically.  But  even 
supposing  all  problems  of  this  sort  were  cleared  up, 
we  should  not  have  explained  the  world.  Why 
not  ?  Because  the  terms  used  are  not  self-explan- 
atory. 

There  are  many  different  forms  of  energy  in 
the  world, — powers  of  changing  the  state  of  mo- 
tion or  of  doing  work.  Science  measures  these 
different  "energies,"  studies  their  transferences 
and  transformations,  and  demonstrates  their  in- 
destructibility, or,  at  any  rate,  our  inability  to 
increase  or  decrease  their  amount  by  the  slightest. 
What  energy  ultimately  is,  science  does  not  pre- 
tend to  tell  us. 

There  are  many  different  kinds  of  matter  in 
the  world  occupying  space  and  possessing  weight. 
Science  studies  the  properties  of  the  different  kinds 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  229 

of  matter,  and  forms  theories  of  the  constitution 
of  matter,  e.  g.,  that  it  consists  of  molecules  which 
consist  of  atoms,  which  consist  of  corpuscles  sur- 
rounded by  positive  electricity,  which  are  them- 
selves units  of  negative  electricity.  We  know  that 
we  cannot  add  to  or  take  from  the  sum-total  of 
matter  in  the  world.  As  far  as  we  are  concerned 
it  is  quite  indestructible.  What  matter  ultimately 
is,  science  does  not  pretend  to  tell  us,  unless  it  ex- 
plains it  away  altogether  in  terms  of  electricity. 
The  "Ding  an  sich"  is  not  a  subject  of  scientific 
inquiry. 

It  has  apparently  become  necessary  to  postulate 
besides  matter  and  energy  a  third  something — 
the  ether.  This  is  a  hypothetical  "medium  of 
extreme  tenuity  and  elasticity  diffused  throughout 
all  space,  the  medium  for  the  transmission  of 
radiant  energy."  What  it  is,  whether  matter  or 
non-matter,  we  do  not  know;  nor,  in  the  strict 
sense,  do  we  know  that  it  is  at  all.  It  is  a  necessary 
fiction  in  the  scientific  redescription  of  occurrences, 
and  corresponds  to  something  real. 

Riddles  of  History. — To  understand  things  as 
they  are,  we  must  throw  upon  them  the  light  of 
past  history.  This  is  a  familar  dictum,  and  it  is, 
of  course,  in  a  measure  true.  But  we  must  not 
forget  how  far  from  complete  this  genetic  knowl- 
edge is.  How  far  we  are  from  any  security  as  to 
the  history  of  the  solar  system,  of  the  earth,  of  its 


230  The  Bible  of  Nature 

plants  and  animals,  or  of  prehistoric  man.  Louis 
Agassi z  spoke  of  the  gap  between  the  unicellular 
Protists  and  multicellular  organisms  with  "bod- 
ies" as  "the  greatest  gulf  in  organic  nature";  how 
was  that  gulf  bridged  ?  Every  zoologist  believes 
— that  is  the  proper  word  to  use — that  backboned 
animals  were  evolved  from  backboneless  ances- 
tors, but  who  shall  say  from  what  kind  of  back- 
boneless  animal,  or  by  what  steps,  or  under  what 
conditions?  Most  anthropologists  believe  that 
man  was,  like  other  organisms,  the  long  result  of 
time,  that  he  sprang  from  an  ape-like  stock,  but 
no  one  knows  from  which,  or  where,  or  when,  or 
how. 

Riddles  as  to  Origins. — Greatest  of  all  perhaps  are 
the  riddles  as  to  origins.  There  is  always  a  good 
deal  of  difficulty  in  starting  the  triumphant  char- 
iot of  evolution.  "Ce  n'est  que  le  premier  pas 
qui  coute." 

Given  the  consolidated  earth  we  can  account 
for  its  sculpturing,  but  how  did  the  earth  begin  ? 
Was  it  from  a  condensed  nebula,  how  did  the 
nebula  begin  ?  Was  the  nebula  a  swarm  of  collid- 
ing meteorites,  whence  came  they?  Have  the 
different  kinds  of  matter  been  evolved,  what  was 
the  raw  material  ?  Is  matter  explained  away  as 
"nothing  but  electricity,"  had  this  an  origin  ? 

Given  living  organisms  to  start  with,  we  can  in 
some  measure  redescribe  the  evolution  of  our 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  231 

present-day  fauna  and  flora,  but  whence  came  liv- 
ing organisms  ?  Did  they  first  arise  from  the  dust 
of  the  earth  ?  By  what  steps  did  this  come  about  ? 
And  if  the  living  arose  from  the  not-living,  what 
was  the  origin  of  this  marvellous  raw  material 
which  had  the  potentiality  of  livingness  in  it? 

Given  simple  behaviour  and  (inferred)  simple 
psychical  processes,  we  can,  with  much  hesitancy 
and  hypothesis  at  present,  sketch  out  a  series  of 
stages  leading  on  to  intricate  behaviour  and  intri- 
cate mental  processes,  but  what  were  the  condi- 
tions antecedent  to  mind  ?  Is  it  coextensive  with 
life,  or  does  it  mysteriously  emerge  when  a  suffi- 
cient number  of  nerve-cells  become  integrated  into 
a  tiny  brain?  And  if  the  primitive  protoplasts 
from  which  the  biologist  starts  had  in  them  the 
potentiality  of  mind,  then  how  is  that  rudiment 
related  to  the  not-living  if  the  protoplasts  came 
from  that? 

"Let  us  admit,  as  scientific  men,  that  of  real 
origin,  even  of  the  simplest  thing,  we  know  noth- 
ing; not  even  of  a  pebble."1 

It  is  well,  surely,  that  this  perennial  difficulty 
as  to  origins  should  be  frankly  faced,  even  at  the 
risk  of  misunderstanding  on  the  part  of  those  who, 
being  unaware  of  what  scientific  method  is,  make 
apologetic  capital  out  of  every  such  admission, 

1  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  "Ideals  of  Science  and  Faith,"  Lon- 
don, 1905,  p.  27. 


232  The  Bible  of  Nature 

proclaiming  that  science  has  confessed  herself 
bankrupt.  Three  notes  are  here  necessary. 

(a)  In  the  first  place,  these  difficulties  as  to 
origins  are  not  all  on  the  same  plane.  The  con- 
ditions of  the  origin  of  birds  are  unknown,  but 
we  cannot  doubt  that  birds  sprang  from  a  reptilian 
stock,  and  this  problem  is  much  more  soluble  than 
that  of  the  origin  of  Vertebrates.  The  origin  of 
Vertebrates  or  the  origin  of  multicellular  organisms 
is  almost  certain  to  be  much  less  obscure  fifty  years 
hence  than  it  is  now;  but  it  is  possible  that  the 
origin  of  living  organisms  will  be  no  nearer  solu- 
tion a  century  hence.  The  question  of  the  origin 
of  mind  is  again  of  a  different  order,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  question  as  we  have  put  it  is  quite  ille- 
gitimate. To  ask  where  the  first  raw  material 
of  the  Kosmos  came  from  is  to  ask  how  the  be- 
ginning began. 

(6)  In  the  second  place,  sound  science  can 
begin  at  any  point  without  necessarily  accounting 
for — i.  e.,  describing  the  genesis  of — its  data. 
There  are  few  biologists  who  trouble  their  heads 
about  the  origin  of  living  creatures.  They  take 
the  origin  of  organisms  for  granted,  and  proceed 
to  study  the  structure  and  activities,  the  develop- 
ment and  racial  history  of  particular  forms. 
Similarly  there  is  thoroughly  sound  anthropology 
and  psychology,  starting  from  man  and  mind  as 
"given." 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  233 

(c)  In  the  third  place,  while  science  aims  at 
redescribing  in  the  simplest  available  terms  what 
has  taken  place  in  the  past  and  goes  on  taking 
place  now,  it  does  not  pretend  to  explain  anything.1 
It  shows  painstakingly  that  a  certain  collocation 
of  antecedents  will  result  in  a  certain  collocation  of 
consequents;  it  can  often  analyze  the  sequence 
of  events  into  a  series  of  simple  movements;  but 
except  in  this  sense  of  reducing  to  a  common 
denominator,  it  does  not  explain  anything.  Under 
certain  conditions  hydrogen  and  oxygen  combine 
to  form  water,  and  some  analysis  of  the  probable 
succession  of  events  is  possible,  but  in  the  long  run 
the  chemist  does  not  tell  us  how  it  is  that  the  two 
gases  form  water.  Not  to  be  too  pedantic,  there 
is  a  sense  in  which  the  physicist  can  explain  the 
path  of  a  projectile  or  the  course  of  a  comet,  but 
it  is  always  in  terms,  such  as  gravitation,  which  are 
not  self-explanatory.  In  most  cases,  moreover,  he 
works  with  symbols,  such  as  molecules,  atoms,  and 
corpuscles,  which  are  representative  of  the  un- 
known real  things,  so  representative  of  them  that 

1  "  It  is  very  desirable,"  Huxley  said,  "to  remember  that 
evolution  is  not  an  explanation  of  the  cosmos,  but  merely 
a  generalized  statement  of  the  method  and  results  of  that 
process.  And,  further,  that,  if  there  is  any  proof  that  the 
cosmic  process  was  set  agoing  by  any  agent,  then  that 
agent  will  be  the  creator  of  it  and  of  all  its  products,  al- 
though supernatural  intervention  may  remain  strictly 
excluded  from  its  further  course." 


234  The  Bible  of  Nature 

prediction  is  possible,  but  which  are  none  the  less 
fictions  of  his  own  creation.  Science  tells  us  that 
when  counters  A,  B,  C  move  in  such  and  such  a 
way,  counters  D,  E,  F  move  in  an  equally  definite 
way.  But  what  makes  the  moves,  or  how  is  it  ex- 
actly that  A,  B,  C  lead  to  D,  E,  F,  what  combines 
the  tactics  into  a  strategy,  why  should  there  be  a 
strategy  at  all?  Science  cannot  tell  us. 

Professor  Ray  Lankester1  puts  the  position 
clearly. 

"The  whole  order  of  nature,  including  living  and  life- 
less matter — from  man  to  gas — is  a  network  of  mechan- 
ism,1 the  main  features  and  many  details  of  which  have 
been  made  more  or  less  obvious  to  the  wondering  intel- 
ligence of  mankind  by  the  labor  and  ingenuity  of  scientific 
investigators.  But  no  sane  man  has  ever  pretended, 
since  science  became  a  definite  body  of  doctrine,  that  we 
know  or  ever  can  hope  to  know  or  conceive  of  the  possi- 
bility of  knowing,  whence  this  mechanism  has  come,  why 
it  is  there,  whither  it  is  going,  and  what  there  may  or  may 
not  be  beyond  and  beside  it  which  our  senses  are  incapable 
of  appreciating.  These  things  are  not  'explained'  by 
science,  and  never  can  be." 

The  Death  of  the  Earth. — Another  riddle  that  gives 
us  pause  is  the  suggestion  that  comes  from  various 

1  See  Times,  May  17,  1903,  and  "The  Kingdom  of 
Man,"  1907,  p.  62. 

1  From  our  point  of  view  mechanism  is  an  inadequate 
term  for  the  redescription  of  living  creatures,  but  it  may 
be  used  in  a  wide  sense  to  include  all  arrangements  of 
natural  causes. 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  235 

quarters  that  this  fair  earth  of  ours  and  all  that 
it  contains  will  some  day  die,  as  the  moon  for  in- 
stance has  died.  "For  millions  of  years,"  Hux- 
ley said,  "our  globe  has  taken  the  upward  road, 
yet,  sometime,  the  summit  will  be  reached  and  the 
downward  route  will  be  commenced."  The  inde- 
structible matter  and  energy  will  doubtless  pass 
into  a  different  expression,  but  a  particular  thought 
will  have  completed  itself. 

The  Riddle  of  Suffering. — Another  riddle  which 
can  never  be  far  from  the  thoughts  of  those  who 
are  not  extraordinarily  light-hearted  is  the  riddle 
of  suffering  and  sorrow  and  evil. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  little  what  is  called  "the 
cruelty  of  nature."  We  probably  make  the  riddle 
more  difficult  by  our  anthropomorphic  way  of 
looking  at  things,  exaggerating  the  pain  that  ani- 
mals feel,  but  there  is  a  large  residuum.  Some 
insects  may  be  cut  in  two  without  showing  any 
reaction  at  all,  but  it  requires  an  optimist  to  believe 
that  it  can  be  pleasant  to  be  eaten  alive.  Let  us 
hope  that  the  oysters  which  often  glide — very 
much  alive — down  our  gullets,  like  so  many 
"gustatory  flashes  of  summer  lightning,"  are 
speedily  paralyzed.  But  this  aspect  of  the  prob- 
lem of  "  cruelty "  does  not  seem  to  press  heavily 
on  the  souls  of  carnivorous  mankind. 

Concerning  "the  cruelty  of  Nature"  Alfred 
Russel  Wallace  writes:  "There  is  good  reason 


236  The  Bible  of  Nature 

to  believe  that  the  supposed  torments  and  mise- 
ries of  animals  have  little  real  existence — that 
the  amount  of  actual  suffering  caused  by  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  altogether  insignificant." 
.  .  .  "Animals  are  spared  from  the  pain  of 
anticipating  death;  violent  deaths,  if  not  too 
prolonged,  are  painless  and  easy;  neither  do 
those  which  die  of  cold  or  hunger  suffer  much; 
the  popular  idea  of  the  struggle  for  existence  en- 
tailing misery  and  pain  on  the  animal  world  is  the 
very  reverse  of  the  truth."  This  is  cheerful  opti- 
mism, yet  even  Darwin,  who  confessed  that  he 
found  in  the  world  "too  much  misery,"  concludes 
his  chapter  on  the  struggle  for  Existence  with  the 
sentence,  "When  we  reflect  on  the  struggle,  we 
may  console  ourselves  with  the  full  belief  that  the 
war  of  nature  is  not  incessant,  that  no  fear  is  felt, 
that  death  is  generally  prompt,  and  that  the  vigor- 
ous, the  healthy,  and  the  happy  survive  and 
multiply." 

If  we  say  that  it  is  not  so  much  the  cruelty  that 
repels  us,  but  the  rank  egoism  of  it  all,  then  we 
are  raising  a  different  problem,  which  was  con- 
sidered in  connection  with  Huxley's  contrast  of 
human  and  cosmic  evolution. 

Or  if  we  allow  ourselves  to  think  of  the  wastage 
of  individual  life,  we  raise  another  problem. 
"Admirable  doubtless,"  Prof.  D.  G.  Ritchie  wrote, 
"  this  scheme  of  salvation  for  the  elect  by  the  dam- 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  237 

nation  of  the  vast  majority,  but  pray,  do  not  let  us 
hear  anything  more  about  its  beneficence."  There 
is  no  end  to  self-made  problems  of  this  sort — made 
by  introducing  irrelevant  concepts. 

In  regard  to  human  affairs,  without  any  affecta- 
tion of  callousness,  the  scientific  inquirer  is  bound 
to  recognize  a  number  of  facts. 

(a)  There  are  what  may  be  called  "growing 
pains,"  the  tax  on  progress,  the  troubles  incident 
on  new  adjustments  and  new  adaptations.  "A 
heavy  tax  is  levied  on  all  forms  of  success,"  as 
Huxley  said.  In  mankind,  as  in  nature,  it  holds 
good  that 

"  Life  is  not  as  idle  ore, 
But  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 
And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears, 
And  dipped  in  baths  of  hissing  tears 
And  battered  by  the  shocks  oi  doom 
To  shape  and  use." 

This  is  surely  better  than  what  Nietzsche  called 
"the  universal  green-grazing  happiness  of  the 
herd." 

(6)  Secondly,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  a 
considerable  part  of  human  evil  is  due  to  our  an- 
cestral inheritance,  especially  to  the  beast  in  the 
man.  We  can  only  set  against  this  the  still  strong- 
er assets  of  our  inheritance,  and  the  means  that  are 
at  our  disposal  for  improving  our  inherited  nature 
by  nurture  in  the  widest  and  highest  sense. 


238  The  Bible  of  Nature 

(c)  Thirdly,  from  the  biological  point  of  view, 
a  good  many  of  our  troubles  and  disharmonies  are 
due  to  the  fact  that  we  tend  to  continue  habits, 
e.  g.,  of  eating,  which  are  anachronisms,  from  which 
we  have  both  organically  and  socially  evolved 
away.     If  we  persist  in  wearing  an  arctic  ex- 
plorer's dress  in  the  Tropics  we  should  not  com- 
plain of  the  heat.    The  problem  becomes  com- 
plicated for  man  because  he  has  created  around 
himself  an   intricate   social   environment   which 
evolves  regardless  of  the  individual.    Thus  there 
comes  about,  for  instance,  a  continual  clashing  of 
biological  and  sociological  ideals. 

(d)  Fourthly,  we  must  recognize  with  Huxley 
that  "there  is  a  terrible  amount  of  needless  suffer- 
ing amongst  us,  part  of  the  awfulness  of  which  is 
that  it  means  piling  up  pain  and  sorrow  for  gener- 
ations yet  unborn."    We  must  not  blame  the  sys- 
tem of  things  for  this;  we  are  ourselves  to  blame. 
And  of  all  futile  exercises  of  the  human  intelligence 
perhaps  that  is  worst  which  seeks  to  find  some 
apologetic  interpretation  of  needless  suffering.     We 
should  never  seek  to  apologize  for  the  preventible, 
we  should  seek  to  prevent  it.     Better  than  any 
philosophical  consolation  over  spilt  milk  is  the  in- 
vention of  an  unupsettable  pitcher. 

The  Philosophical  and  the  Scientific  Outlook. — Our 
general  position  may  be  made  clearer  if  we  try  to 
indicate  how  the  philosophical  outlook  differs  from 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  239 

that  of  science.  It  is  the  work  of  science  to  reduce 
things  to  a  common  denominator  or  to  a  simple 
beginning,  such  as  Matter,  Energy,  and  Ether,  or 
the  life  of  a  protoplast.  This  sort  of  analysis  and 
genetic  description  clears  up  obscurities,  affords 
a  basis  for  action,  and  is  in  any  case  forced  upon 
us  by  our  desire  to  unravel  things,  to  refund  phe- 
nomena into  their  antecedent  conditions.  But  it 
does  not  satisfy  the  human  spirit,  partly  because 
the  common  denominator  is  in  itself  mysterious, 
partly  because  science  never  tells  us  why  so  much 
should  come  out  of  apparently  little.  It  gives  an 
account  of  the  tactics  of  Nature,  but  never  explains 
the  strategy.  It  is  unsatisfying. 

For  this  reason  every  one  has  some  philosophy, 
which  is  based  on  his  own  experience.  He  feels, 
for  instance,  that  the  surest  reality  to  him  is  his 
own  personal  agency,  particularly  his  moral  activ- 
ity, and  he  projects  this  upon  Nature,  saying  that 
there  must  be  a  First  Cause,  some  real  power, 
giving  substance  to  all  the  metaphorical  causes, 
the  secondary  or  caused  causes,  that  Natural 
Science  deals  with.  Thus  he  finds  God  as  the 
ever-present  real  power  in  the  world,  operating  in 
and  through  natural  laws.  He  sees  in  "natural 
causes  only  the  connections  of  phenomena  es- 
tablished by  an  ever-active  divine  will " ;  he  believes 
in  God  as  "the  real  agent  in  Nature  and  in  all 
natural  evolution." 


240  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Or  again,  he  feels  that  "the  purpose  of  his  life 
is  the  most  intimate  and  fundamental  reality  of 
which  he  has  any  knowledge,"  and  he  projects  on 
Nature  this  explanatory  unifying  idea  of  purpose, 
believing  that  the  causal  reality  of  which  Nature 
is  an  expression  is  also  Purpose — a  wider  and 
richer  Purpose. 

Again,  amid  the  ceaseless  flux  of  things,  the 
endless  making  and  unmaking,  Werden  und 
Vergehen,  Man  makes  a  demand  for  an  end — in 
itself — "  that  is,  for  a  fact  of  such  a  nature  that  its 
existence  justifies  itself."  He  cannot  find  this  in 
extra-human  nature;  he  can  find  it  only  in  his  own 
spiritual  development.  There  he  finds  an  end  in 
itself  worthy  of  attainment,  and  he  reads  this  back 
into  nature  as  the  end  of  existence  as  such,  as  "  the 
open  secret  of  the  universe."  To  many  "the 
moral  and  spiritual  life  remains  unintelligible  un- 
less on  the  supposition  that  it  is  in  reality  the  key 
to  the  world's  meaning,  the  fact  in  the  light  of 
which  all  other  phenomena  must  be  read." 
"Man's  personal  agency — the  one  perpetual  mir- 
acle— is  nevertheless  our  sure  datum  and  our  only 
clue  to  the  mystery  of  existence."  (A.  Pringle 
Pattison.) 

Limitations  of  Science. — There  have  been  some 
who  have  not  hesitated  to  publish  abroad  what 
they  regard  as  a  scientific  clearing  up  of  the  riddles 
of  the  universe,  leaving  their  gullible  readers  with 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  241 

the  impression  that  everything  has  been  explained. 
It  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that,  as  far  as 
science  is  concerned,  nothing  has  been  explained. 
Of  course  immediate  explanations  are  contin- 
ually being  given,  but  they  are  never  more  than 
statements  of  fact,  or  accurate  descriptions  of 
happenings,  or  unravellings  of  an  intricate  se- 
ries of  sequences  into  their  component  more 
familiar  sequences,  or  comparisons  of  what 
seems  a  novel  succession  of  events  with  previ- 
ously well-known  successions,  or  tracing  back  a 
development  through  its  phases,  or  making  :a 
general  formula  which  unifies  a  whole  series  of 
occurrences,  and  so  on.  These  interpretations 
leave  the  fundamental  mysteriousness  of  the  uni- 
verse untouched. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  service  that  we  can  do  in 
this  course  is  simply  to  emphasize  these  limitations 
of  science,  thus  clearing  the  way  for  ideal  con- 
structions which  each  of  us  must  make  after  his 
own  fashion,  which  will  not  be  true  for  us  unless 
we  make  them  ourselves.  Thus  while  it  may  seem 
at  first  discouraging  to  say  that  "all  our  physical 
experience  is  rounded  with  mystery,"  further  re- 
flection will  show  that  "this  final  margin  of  mys- 
tery becomes  the  light  of  life."  In  face  of  these 
riddles,  we  feel  that  the  scientific  outlook  alone  is 
unsatisfying.  Many  scientific  workers,  who  can 
find  no  resting-place  in  science  alone,  agree  with 


242  The  Bible  of  Nature 

the  author  of  the  "Foundations  of  Belief,"  when 
he  says: 

"  I  do  not  believe  that  any  escape  from  these  perplexities 
is  possible,  unless  we  are  prepared  to  bring  to  the  study 
of  the  world  the  presupposition  that  it  was  the  work  of  a 
rational  Being,  who  made  it  intelligible,  and  at  the  same 
time  made  us,  in  however  feeble  a  fashion,  able  to  under- 
stand it."  (Page  301.) 

Anima  Animans. — We  have  tried  to  indicate  what 
we  believe  to  be  the  modern  scientific  position  in 
regard  to  the  genesis  of  the  Earth,  Living  Creat- 
ures, and  Man.  How,  it  may  be  asked,  is  the 
idealistic  outlook l  affected  ?  As  far  as  we  can  un- 
derstand, not  in  the  slightest. 

(1)  It  is  open  to  the  idealist  to  give  a  name  to 
the  scientific  x  which  lies  behind  energy,  matter, 
and  ether,  and  to  call  it  Spirit,  the  Logos,  the 
Absolute,  God. 

(2)  It  is  legitimate  to  use  the  familiar  epistemo- 
logical  argument  which  points  out  that  the  scien- 
tific categories  are  mental  concepts  of  our  own 
making.     If  we  interpret  nature  in  terms  of  our 
own  thoughts,  we  cannot  use  scientific  formulae 
to  explain  away  our  thoughts,  as  by-products  of 
nervous  matter.    Those  who  are  fond  of  talking 
of  the  bankruptcy  of  science — we  do  not  know 

1  The  philosophical  doctrine  of  idealism  "  finds  the  ulti- 
mate reality  of  the  universe  in  mind  or  spirit,  and  its  end 
in  the  perfecting  of  spiritual  life." 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  243 

why — often  begin  by  pointing  out  that  this  bank- 
ruptcy is  a  foregone  conclusion  because  of  the 
debts  with  which  science  starts.  But  to  make 
apologetic  capital  of  this  is  again  to  fail  to  under- 
stand what  the  aim  of  science  is. 

(3)  It  is  legitimate,  at  present  at  least,  to  main- 
tain that,  when  we  pass  from  inanimate  to  animate 
nature,  we  cannot  redescribe  vital  phenomena  in 
terms  of  mechanical  categories.     In  life  there  is 
something  new — in  any  case  there  is  new  synthesis 
of  matter  and  energy  with  new  properties  more 
wonderful  than  those  of  radium.     Nothing  per- 
haps is  gained   by  postulating  a  vital  principle 
or  a  vital  force,  but  the  mechanical  categories, 
as  at  present  formulated,  do   not  enable  us  to 
read  the   secret  of  the  organism.     If  the  ani- 
mate world   has   emerged   from   the   bosom  of 
the  inanimate,  then  the  common  denominator  of 
Matter,  Energy,  Ether  must   include  the  poten- 
tiality of  giving  rise   in  appropriate  conditions 
to  what  we  call  life.     This  invests  the  common 
denominator  with  even  more   significance  than 
before. 

(4)  It  is  legitimate  to  point  out  that  the  most 
real  thing  in  the  world  to  us  is  our  own  conscious 
experience.     In  thinking  about  ourselves,  mind 
is  as  necessary  a  postulate  as  ether  is  to  the  physi- 
cist. When  we  pass  from.ourselves  to  the  behaviour 
of  other  living  creatures,  we  cannot  leave  mind 


244  The  Bible  of  Nature 

out,  if  we  are  not  to  give  a  false  simplicity  to  the 
facts.  We  do  not  in  any  way  understand  how  the 
bodily  life  comes  to  have  this  inner  aspect  which 
we  call  conscious  experience.  Nor  do  we  under- 
stand radio-activity.  We  know  that  our  mind, 
as  far  as  we  know  it,  is  bound  up  with  matter; 
we  know  that  it  cannot  give  rise  to  matter;  we 
cannot  think  of  any  way  in  which  matter — say, 
units  of  negative  electricity — could  give  rise  to  it. 
Mind  comes  into  potency  under  certain  conditions. 
This  is  true1  in  individual  development  as  well  as 
in  racial  history.  We  cannot  think  of  its  being 
interpolated  from  without  into  instruments  pre- 
pared for  its  reception.  This  invests  the  common 
denominator  with  even  more  significance  than  be- 
fore. In  fact,  it  merges  into  the  greatest  common 
measure. 

We  observe  the  every-day  life  of,  let  us  say,  a 
clever  bird,  such  as  a  parrot  or  a  rook.  It  seems 
impossible  to  give  an  intelligible  account  of  it 
without  crediting  the  bird  with  an  intelligence  as 
real  as  our  own.  Its  power  of  intelligent  behaviour 
is  wrapped  up  with  its  highly  evolved  nervous 
system.  We  cannot  separate  the  objective  and 
the  subjective  aspects,  or  interpret  the  one  in 
terms  of  the  other.  But  this  mental  life  of  the 
bird  was  implicit  in  the  egg  just  as  the  nerve  ele- 
ments were.  The  power  of  intelligent  behaviour 
becomes  patent  at  a  certain  stage  in  development 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  245 

just  as  the  power  of  flight  does.  Thus  mind  or 
something  analogous  to  mind  may  be  latent  in  a 
material  basis  which  in  itself  shows  no  trace  of 
mind.  No  trace,  except  indeed  this,  that  it  de- 
velops after  a  fashion  that  we  cannot  redescribe 
in  terms  of  the  movements  of  corpuscles.  May 
it  not  be  that  mind  lies  in  the  egg — not  inactive 
like  a  sleeping  bud — but  doing  for  the  egg  what 
the  mind  does  for  the  body,  unifying,  regulat- 
ing, in  a  sense  directing  it,  not  insinuating  itself 
into  the  sequences  of  metabolism,  but,  so  to  speak, 
informing  them  and  expressing  itself  through 
them  ?  We  mean  that  the  regulative  principle,  the 
entelechy,  which  many  embryologists  find  it  nec- 
essary to  postulate  in  giving  a  more  than  merely 
chronological  account  of  an  individual  develop- 
ment, is  that  resident  quality  of  a  living  organism 
which  in  its  full  expression  we  call  mind.  May 
not  the  same  conception  be  extended  to  the 
amoeba  ?  And  why  stop  there  ?  Why  not  extend 
it  also  to  the  crystal,  the  jewel,  the  mineral,  the 
mountain,  the  meteorites  and  the  nebula — in  short, 
to  the  Cosmos  in  general  ?  It  may  be  said,  how- 
ever, that  though  man  materializes  an  idea  when 
he  makes  a  clever  machine,  there  is  no  mind  in  the 
machine,  and  may  not  the  bird  be  a  materialized 
idea  in  which  likewise  there  is  no  mind  ?  But  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  bird  is  a  creative 
machine. 


246  The  Bible  of  Nature 

Conclusion. — We  have  given  to  these  studies, 
which  must  in  the  meantime  end,  a  large  title — 
"The  Bible  of  Nature"— intending  to  suggest  that 
Nature  is  a  book  we  can  read  and  ought  to  read, 
a  book  from  which  we  may  learn  much  that  con- 
cerns our  mortal  well-being.  In  fact,  as  Goethe 
said,  Nature  is  the  only  book  with  a  great  lesson 
on  every  page.  It  will  be  evident,  however,  that 
we  have  hardly  done  more  than  touch  on  one  aspect 
of  Nature,  namely,  its  history  or  Genesis.  These 
studies  must,  therefore,  be  regarded  simply  as  the 
first  book  of  the  "Bible  of  Nature."  It  should 
be  followed  up  by  other  books,  such  as  the  book 
of  the  Law,  the  book  of  Psalms,  and  the  book  of 
Wisdom! 

After  our  preliminary  outlook  of  wonder — at 
Nature's  immensity  and  magnificent  abundance 
of  power,  her  manifoldness,  intricacy,  and  beauty, 
we  considered  the  history  of  the  earth  as  a  cooling 
planet,  the  advent  of  life,  the  evolution  of  animals, 
and  the  ascent  of  Man.  It  has  all  been  a  story  of 
genesis.  Have  we  read  this  so  that  to  the  con- 
cept of  an  order  established  from  everlasting  there 
has  been  added  the  concept  of  progress,  and  to 
that  the  concept  of  an  evolution  which  suggests 
purpose?  Have  we  told  the  story  so  as  to  sug- 
gest, as  one  of  our  foremost  investigators  has  said, 
that  "men  of  Science  seek,  in  all  reverence,  to 
discover  the  Almighty,  the  Everlasting.  They 


Man's  Place  in  Nature  247 

claim  sympathy  and  friendship  with  those  who, 
like  themselves,  have  turned  away  from  the  more 
material  struggles  of  human  life,  and  have  set 
their  hearts  and  minds  on  the  knowledge  of  the 
Eternal"? 

Have  we  told  the  story  so  as  to  make  plain  that 
to  the  healthy-minded  the  world  is  as  full  of 
wonder  now  as  it  was  in  the  ancient  days  when 
Job  marvelled  at  the  coming  and  going  of  Maz- 
zaroth  and  the  sons  of  Arcturus  ?  Have  we  made 
it  plain  that  even  when  physical  science  succeeds 
in  reducing  a  whole  order  of  facts  to  a  common 
denominator,  it  cannot  explain  its  nature  or  origin  ? 
That  even  when  biological  science  discerns  great 
chains  of  sequence,  it  remains  unaware  of  what 
life  really  is;  and  that  even  when  science,  as  a 
whole,  traces  out  for  its  own  purposes  a  network 
of  mechanism  embracing  all,  "no  sane  man  has 
ever  pretended,  since  science  became  a  definite 
body  of  doctrine,  that  we  know  or  ever  can  hope 
to  know  or  conceive  of  the  possibility  of  knowing, 
whence  this  mechanism  has  come,  why  it  is  there, 
whither  it  is  going,  and  what  may  or  may  not  be 
beyond  and  beside  it  which  our  senses  are  incap- 
able of  appreciating.  These  things  are  not  'ex- 
plained '  by  science,  and  never  can  be  "  ?  These  are 
things  of  the  spirit,  and  must  be  spiritually  dis- 
cerned. 

If  we  have  succeeded  in  some  measure  with  our 


248  The  Bible  of  Nature 

task,  the  meaning  of  our  ambitious  title  will  be 
clear.  It  was  expressed  long  ago  by  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  in  his  "Religio  Medici": 

"Thus  there  are  two  books  from  whence  I  collect  my 
divinity;  besides  that  written  one  of  God,  another  of  his 
servant  nature,  that  universal  and  public  manuscript  that 
lies  expansed  unto  the  eyes  of  all,  those  that  never  saw 
him  in  the  one,  have  discovered  him  in  the  other:  this  was 
the  scripture  and  theology  of  the  heathens:  the  natural 
motion  of  the  sun  made  them  more  admire  him  than  its 
supernatural  station  did  the  children  of  Israel;  the  ordi- 
nary effects  of  nature  wrought  more  admiration  in  them 
than  in  the  other  all  his  miracles;  surely  the  heathens 
knew  better  how  to  joyn  and  read  these  mystical  letters 
than  we  Christians,  who  cast  a  more  careless  eye  on  these 
common  hieroglyphics,  and  disdain  to  suck  divinity  from 
the  flowers  of  nature."  (Sect.  16.) 

Hear,  indeed,  in  Bacon's  words  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter. 

"This  I  dare  affirm  in  knowledge  of  Nature,  that  a 
little  natural  philosophy,  and  the  first  entrance  into  it, 
doth  dispose  the  opinion  to  atheism,  but  on  the  other  side, 
much  natural  philosophy,  and  .wading  deep  into  it,  will 
bring  about  men's  minds  to  religion." — (Bacon,  "Medita- 
tiones  Sacra  X.") 


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